How Peace Came to the TARDIS
by ThisIsTrueImmortality
Summary: On a diplomatic mission to the Pars System, the Fifth Doctor receives an unexpected responsibility. Together with his companions, he must find a home for a tiny Thionic baby before she grows too dependent on his telepathic signals...or before he becomes too attached to let her go. A marshmallow fic with a side of angst. Maternal!Doctor and cuteness ahead. Pre-Earthshock.
1. The Pars System

**Author's Note: A short little endeavor created between projects. (I'm also working on a much larger Doctor Who project on top of my Avatar: The Last Airbender project) This is a babyfic. It's exceedingly fluffy with a side of angst. You have been warned. **

**A quick note on Classic Who canon: This is my first ever Fifth Doctor story! I love him. He's great. He may or not be in character. Also: My Theories on Gallifreyan child-rearing come into play a little bit. I did my best to keep them as ambivalent as they are on the show, although since they're almost non-existant on the show, that was a tall order. **

**Feedback is welcome regarding characterization!**

**Enjoy!**

1.

The Doctor was already in a foul mood. He had been forced to make an extended stay at Ordo Grocharum, the satellite which held all major diplomatic conferences for the interconnected stars of the Pars System. The major players in the system's hard-won peace had asked for him to stay just long enough to help mediate the negotiations between their disparate factions. Long, drawn-out sociopolitical debates were not The Doctor's forte to begin with, but this particular conference was so charged with hostile energy he thought he might spontaneously combust from the ambience. None of the delegates seemed interested in genuine dialogue; they all seemed more bent on infuriating one another in the most snide of ways possible, only to claim they were just joking and call a recess to the discussions out of pique. The Doctor had nearly had it up to his eyeballs with politics, and he had only been on Ordo Grocharum for two full days.

To make matters worse for The Doctor, all three of his companions had decided to stay on the TARDIS while he went to deal with the diplomats. Tegan had begged off with the excuse of exhaustion, and The Doctor couldn't argue with her. Tegan had gone through a trying few days helping The Doctor sort out the conflict on the Pars System's many stars. Nyssa and Adric had both claimed to need to stay on the TARDIS to monitor an experiment they had started in one of the space-and-time-ship's many laboratories. The Doctor, a little over-tired himself, hadn't bothered to make a fuss over their reluctance. Instead, he had donned his fawn-colored coat and had left the TARDIS, alone, to face one of the most unpleasant side effects of peace he had ever experienced.

Now, seated in a room full of various lifeforms making icy remarks about their rivals' planets, The Doctor sighed in weariness. "Can't you please just come to a resolution?" he asked, irritably. "All this squabbling will accomplish absolutely nothing, as you all surely know."

"Doctor," said one of the delegates, his orange head crest fluffed up in indignation, "please do not refer to our negotiations as 'squabbling'. These are serious matters that we must discuss."

"Oh, really? It sounds rather petty, for negotiations." The Doctor shrugged, feigning innocence. "But, you know, there are reasons why I never considered a career as a diplomat. I have no finesse for this sort of thing."

"Are you mocking us, Doctor?" the orange-skinned diplomat blustered.

The Doctor widened his eyes, his expression just shy of ridiculous. "Why would I ever do that?"

With a huff, the orange delegate turned back to his former conversation. His teal-skinned rival welcomed his return and began to fire off semi-sarcastic questions with even greater zeal. As the orange alien's crest sprang into stiffness once again, The Doctor gave a languishing sigh and slid further down in his chair at the long conference table. He enjoyed another moment of stillness before an irate representative of the allied star Juhai Duram borrowed his ear to rant about his tormentor.

The Doctor spent the next half hour soothing bruised egos and pushing the conference toward a definite ending, mentally gritting his teeth all the while. This sort of political garbage was half the reason he had left his own planet, Gallifrey, in favor of travelling the universe. Time Lords could talk other species under the table, and they had the capabilities to do it in several languages, dimensions, and timelines. As soon as the Pars delegates appeared to be somewhat calm and not likely to erupt into a riot, he would discreetly see himself out of the conference room and into his TARDIS.

Two rounds of motions raised and rejected later, The Doctor had determined he would need to take a firmer stand in this debate. He stood and delivered a poignant, rather perfect speech, but he hardly knew what he was saying even as he spoke. He just wanted to convince the delegates to come to some kind of resolution regarding peace on their planets. The delegates interrupted him occasionally, but he silenced them with the efficiency of one who has had to shout down Tegan Jovanka on a regular basis.

The Doctor was close to the end of his compelling speech when, from out of nowhere, he heard a peculiar noise. It was a tinny, high-pitched cry that originated from somewhere outside the conference room. The sound grated on his ears. With a twitch and only a minor flip of his smooth blonde hair, The Doctor continued his speech, only to be interrupted again by the same sound. He listened intently this time, and realized something puzzling: the noise was the cry of a baby.

"Go on, Doctor," one purple-toned delegate urged.

"Oh," The Doctor, said, "yes, well, it's just that—" He cocked his head to the side as the cries continued, "do you hear that?"

"Do get on with it, Doctor," another diplomat said, testily.

"Yes, of course. I do apologize." The Doctor cleared his throat and pressed on with his speech, trying to ignore the pitiful little sound echoing throughout the satellite.

As his last sentence drew to a close, The Doctor had to admit that he had never been very good at ignoring small creatures in distress. He knew it had nothing to do with instinct, because Time Lords did not have parental instincts, and he would react much the same way if he heard a baby bird or a baby reptile in distress. Of course, he knew this, it was a fact of biology, and it was quite simple. Time Lords were not driven by the baser urges of less evolved species. They did not go sprinting out of conference rooms to locate babies which were crying so loudly.

"Do you hear that child?" asked The Doctor, after he had finished his speech.

The Parsian delegate to whom he spoke said, "Of course, I hear it."

"Well, isn't one of you going to go take care of it? Surely, it belongs to one of you Parsians." But the delegate was no longer listening; he had been pulled away by his orange-skinned companion. "Oh, honestly," The Doctor said, annoyed, "a crying baby is a more important matter than which color the treaty should be printed in."

Around him, the fruitful dialogue The Doctor had tried to create began to blossom, but he no longer felt satisfied by his success. He moved around in a small circle, demanding, "Isn't one of you going to find out whose baby that is?" and "Yes, but do you hear that small person crying? Don't you think you should attend to him or her?" When he got no results from the first two questions, The Doctor tried again. "Every species in the Pars System is highly nurturing to its young, so isn't that noise bothering you?" The delegates The Doctor addressed would all look confused by his questions or ignore him entirely. The buzz around the conference table grew stronger, but the baby's cries got weaker, and all of a sudden The Doctor's thin thread of tolerance for stupidity snapped.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," he cried, shoving back his chair, "are you really going to make the least paternal person in the room go find that crying baby? Oh, what a brilliant idea! One would almost think you lot had planned this out, but why anyone would do that is too baffling to contemplate! Good day, and good night, and goodbye!"

With a sharp flourish of his long, fawn-colored coat, The Doctor turned and stalked out of the room, leaving a stunned mass of diplomats in his wake. He stormed along the corridors of Ordo Grocharum, muttering to himself in Gallifreyan. The baby had nearly stopped crying, and The Doctor knew that its lungs must be exhausted. It had been crying for twenty minutes without relief. "What kind of Parsian parent leaves its offspring alone for that length of time?" The Doctor said, still in Gallifreyan. "It's practically an abomination of nature. These delegates are some of the most backward people I have ever met, and that includes the Backward People of Drawkcab."

The irritated Time Lord continued in this vein until he came upon the tranquil garden which had been set into the center of the satellite. The Doctor always thought Parsian peace gardens resembled a pleasing mix of Earth Japanese and Earth French sensibilities, and this large, extravagant affair was no exception. The vibrant green ferns and red-leafed trees were arranged in the Parsian symbols of harmony. Each cluster of plants drew the eye toward the center of the garden, where a fountain flowed over with the shining black water which was the trademark of Juhai Duram.

The Doctor hardly even noticed the alien symmetry of the peace garden, for there, lying beside the black-water fountain, was a small, fluffy white bundle. The bundle squirmed and snuffled, then hiccupped violently. The Doctor hurried into the garden and knelt down beside the fountain, scooping the little mass of blankets into his arms. "There, there," he said, hurriedly, "there's no need to snuffle quite so enthusiastically. Someone's found you, now." He reached for the triangle of white material which covered the tiny creature's face. "Don't worry, I'll find your parents, and you'll be back in a Parsian family unit in-", the blanket dropped away from the creature's face, "-no time…Oh." The Doctor blinked his wide blue eyes down at the bundle. "_You're_ not a Parsian."

The baby didn't have a secondary color for a skin tone, and it had absolutely no head crest. Instead, it had smooth, creamy pale skin, a modest layer of white hair, a snubbed nose, and only two enormous blue eyes. It had stopped making distressed noises as soon as it had been picked up, but now it wiggled in The Doctor's arms and gave another strangled cry.

Quite without warning, The Doctor's fingers on his left hand reached out and smoothed themselves against the baby's forward. Then, also without warning, his forehead made delicate contact with the smooth, soft skin of the baby's brow. As he sat there, wondering where his hand and skull had learned to perform actions independent of his brain, The Doctor felt his heartbeats slow and his breath fall deeply and evenly across the baby's face. Astonishingly, The Doctor could feel the baby's fragile heart drop to a gentler rhythm in its chest, and its hitching breaths turned into quiet, restful sighs.

The Doctor pulled his face away from the baby and stared at it, stuck somewhere between confusion and alarm. "Now," he said to the baby, "what is a high-level telepath infant doing on a satellite full of Parsians?" The baby's eyes drifted closed, and it dropped into sleep. Sighing, The Doctor tucked it more firmly against his chest and turned to leave the garden. "Why do I always have to solve these sorts of questions alone?" he muttered to himself. He carried the baby through the satellite and returned once again to the conference room. The loud buzz of conversation between the many delegates did not rouse the baby from its contented sleep. It simply turned its head and tried to burrow itself into The Doctor's chest cavity.

The Doctor stood a moment and observed the Parsian diplomats. They all seemed to be engaged in animated but civil debates. No one hurled insults or made cuttingly sly remarks. No one ruffled their head crests or released toxic quills from their forearms. In fact, the assembly appeared to be a different group of people entirely from the ones The Doctor had wrangled only half an hour before. The Doctor continued to stand in puzzled silence until one of the delegates noticed his return. "Doctor," he said, "where did you go? We wanted to tell you: we've arrived at amiable terms for the treaty!"

The Doctor still didn't understand. What had happened between his departure and this moment to make the assembly behave like civilized beings? "Excellent," he said, for lack of a better response. "And, now that you've got that matter settled, you can take this baby back to its parents. Surely, they're somewhere on this station?"

Several more delegates looked up and stared at The Doctor. "Baby?" one of them asked.

"Yes," The Doctor said, "the baby. The one I am currently holding. The one who wouldn't stop crying."

"Oh," the delegate said, in a disinterested voice.

"You did hear a baby crying, just a minute ago?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, I wasn't certain that you did, since none of you seemed very worried about it." The delegates all blinked, their faces blank. The Doctor sighed. "And, none of you are worried, now, either."

The first delegate looked bemused and said, "It's not a Parsian baby, Doctor," as if that explained his attitude perfectly.

The Doctor felt anger flash through him, before he forced himself to give the delegates a thin smile. "And, there is the problem with your entire star system, in a nutshell. I do hope you all manage to keep this treaty for at least a decade, but the timelines indicate that my hopes for your people were a bit deluded. I'll just take me and my Not-Parsian baby out of your hair, then, shall I? Goodbye, again!"

With no further words to the Pars System's most eloquent minds, The Doctor walked out of the room and back to his TARDIS. "Don't listen to those cold-blooded fools," he murmured to the child sleeping in his arms, "their limbic systems are under-developed, and they're about as open-minded toward mammalians as clams are open to…well, anything, really." The Doctor shifted the baby slightly to fish his TARDIS key out, opened the lock on the door of the bright blue box, and brought his tiny charge into his time-and-space machine.

* * *

Adric was in the console room when The Doctor entered the TARDIS. The Doctor's teenaged companion was bent over the cylindrical time rotor which stood in the middle of the room. His hands were elbow deep in the console's control panel. He had removed one piece of the panel and was manipulating its inner parts. Sparks would occasionally fly from the depths of the large round structure. In response, Adric would do what any self-respecting teenager would do: he leaned forward and tried to figure out where the sparks originated.

"Adric, what are you doing to my TARDIS?" The Doctor said disapprovingly, although in a much softer tone than usual. The baby was still sleeping, and even a Time Lord with no parental instincts knew a quiet voice was needed while holding a sleeping infant.

Adric turned, then yelped and dropped the screwdriver in his hand onto his foot. "Doctor," he said, "where did that baby come from?"

"Didn't they teach you any basic biology on your home planet?" asked The Doctor, distractedly, trying to jiggle the baby over to one arm so he could toggle a switch on the TARDIS.

"I know where all babies come from!" said Adric, a little too loudly. The Doctor put a finger to his lips and pointed to the baby. Adric's already pink cheeks turned red. He said, in a quieter voice, "I meant, where did this particular baby come from? Where'd you get a baby?"

"Ordo Grocharum," The Doctor said. "It was lying in the peace garden, crying, and no one seemed to care. When I asked the delegates, none of them knew the baby or expressed much concern over its fate. So, I've decided to bring it here, and we'll find its parents."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Adric demanded. He connected two wires on the console and ducked below the curve of the control panel as more sparks shot out of the machine.

"Well, between the four of us, we have formidable intellect and skills. I should think it would be an easy task, for us."

"Doctor, we can't even land in the proper time and place, much less drop off passengers. You've been trying to get Tegan to Heathrow Airport for months. How are we going to find a baby's parents when we'd have to search the whole universe for them?"

More sparks erupted from the console, and the resulting light and noise startled the baby into wakefulness. It started to wail, but The Doctor quickly placed his fingers on its forehead and soothed it back to sleep. Adric watched, amazed, as a being who could be so standoffish toward Adric himself held a tiny person close and calmly and carefully lulled it back to unconsciousness. Adric felt very petty when he realized that a flare of jealousy had sprung up in his heart as he stared at The Doctor and this newfound traveling companion. He went back to work on the console and tried not to think about what sort of a person he was if he could be jealous of a little lost baby.

"I've got a species indicator in the infirmary that should tell us exactly what kind of humanoid this baby is," The Doctor said, as he lightly stroked the baby's face. "We might even get a planet name out of the readings, if we're lucky. Some species are scattered all across the universe, which is a predictable but sometimes annoying side effect of space travel. Still, it should be a promising start to this quest, don't you think?"

"It sounds like it," Adric said. "I take it you don't want to discuss this with all of us, before we adopt this as an official mission?"

The Doctor looked indignant. "Certainly not. This is my TARDIS, need I remind you, Adric. On my TARDIS, we don't have 'missions'. We have voyages, or perhaps the occasional adventure. But, we absolutely do not have 'missions'."

"Of course not, Doctor," said Adric, hiding his face in paneling so he could roll his eyes in peace.

"Don't roll your eyes at me, Adric."

"I would never do that, Doctor."

"Right," The Doctor said, in a huff, "I'm going to the infirmary. Do tell Nyssa and Tegan I'm back, if they come through." He walked past the dismantled console. As he passed, the baby sneezed in its sleep, wrinkling its snub nose against his lapel. "I know," The Doctor said, "teenagers can be so trying, can't they? Not like babies. Babies are such small, helpless creatures, and they are physically incapable of rolling their eyes. I much prefer babies, I think."

"Babies can't fix temporal stabilizers," Adric called out after him, sounding a tad insulted. The Doctor smiled in reply, but he didn't verbally respond.

* * *

"Hello, Adric!" Nyssa said, with a serene smile, as she sailed into the console room.

"G'morning, Adric," Tegan said, in a much less sunny voice. She had a cup of coffee clutched in one hand and a croissant in the other. Adric knew she had slept for almost fourteen hours after her efforts to help bring peace to the Pars System. "What are you doing to the TARDIS?" the older woman asked, as she saw the pieces of the control panel strewn across the floor.

"The Doctor's got a baby," Adric blurted out, then immediately knew that he should have chosen better words.

The two girls' mouths dropped open simultaneously. "What?!" Tegan shouted. "What?"

"What do you mean?" asked Nyssa, looking terribly confused. "The Doctor hasn't had time to procreate with any of the women on the planets we've visited." She turned an inquisitive eye on Tegan. "Unless…"

Tegan's face turned tomato red, and her curly hair seemed to stand on end. "Nyssa," she thundered, "you can't possibly believe that The Doctor and I would—would—_combine our genetics_! On the TARDIS! With you two kids on board!"

"It's not like I'd be offended if you did," Nyssa said, reasonably. "I'm old enough to know these sorts of things, you know."

"What on Earth would ever give you the impression that The Doctor and I are even remotely interested in one another like that! We practically spit in each other's faces every day!"

"Aggression is a mating ritual on some planets."

"Oh, my word," Tegan said, and took a steadying gulp of coffee.

"No, no, Nyssa," Adric cut in hastily, "it's not The Doctor's baby! He found it on Ordo Grocharum, and he wants to find its parents. I told him I thought that was an impossible task—"

"Oh, I bet he liked that," Tegan said, dryly.

"—and now he's gone to the infirmary to run a species identification test on it," Adric finished.

"Oh, I see," Nyssa said. She turned to Tegan. "I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions, Tegan. That was very rude of me."

Tegan smiled weakly. "It's all right. But, if you ask me, I haven't had enough coffee for these kinds of discussions."

Nyssa smiled back, but then she put a hand to her chin in thought. "Although, I still think my theory about mating rituals has merit where the two of you are concerned."

Tegan spit her mouthful of dark, rich Arabica onto the console room floor.

After Adric reassembled the TARDIS console, the Doctor's three companions decided to join him in the infirmary. Nyssa and Tegan had asked Adric what the mysterious Non-Parsian baby looked like, but his vague description had not satisfied their curiosity, and they had concluded that the best way to know more was to go see the baby themselves. Tegan had thought to make a detour to one of the TARDIS's several kitchens to scrounge up a croissant and a cup of coffee for The Doctor, as well. The two teenagers had agreed to this change in the plan.

"You know," Nyssa said, as she wrapped the croissant in a square of baking paper, "it just occurred to me that we don't really know anything about Gallifreyan child-rearing customs. I wonder if The Doctor knows anything about babies."

"He doesn't strike me as the doting type," Tegan said. She poured a generous measure of coffee into a futuristic thermos and added a heaping spoonful of sugar.

"He seemed to know what he was doing," Adric said, from his position in the doorway. "I think the baby's at least slightly telepathic, because when it started crying, The Doctor took his fingers and did something like this." He mimicked the same gentle, stroking motion that The Doctor had performed on the baby's forehead on his own face. "It worked brilliantly," he added, somewhat grudgingly.

"You sound like that's a bad thing," Tegan laughed.

"It would be nice if The Doctor wasn't always more experienced at everything," Adric grumbled.

"Adric, he's at least a few centuries older than you! It only makes sense that he's got a bigger skill set."

"It is a bit surprising that he knows anything at all about babies, though, isn't it?" asked Nyssa. She handed the wrapped croissant to Tegan and followed the older woman out of the kitchen.

"I don't know," answered Tegan. "I really don't know all that much about The Doctor, now that you mention it. Don't you think he's had children, and maybe even grandchildren, in his life?"

Nyssa and Adric both looked rather taken aback by this supposition. Tegan reminded herself that they were both very young by their own people's standards and still naïve about many matters she took for granted. "I…hadn't considered it," Nyssa said, her blue eyes wide, "but, of course, you're right, Tegan."

"You hadn't thought about that, but you'd considered whether we'd _tangoed_ on the TARDIS," Tegan muttered to herself.

The three traveling companions said nothing further until they reached their destination. The infirmary was a medium-sized, sterile room, which had a transparent wall which slid open like a door and several beds stocked with accompanying medical devices. One whole wall of the infirmary contained shelf upon shelf of neatly labeled supplies. Tegan had often found it rather irritating that all the labels were in Gallifreyan, and therefore indecipherable to humans. But now, she was far less distracted by the constant annoyance of useless labels and much more interested in the two people in front of the shelves.

The Doctor stood at the supplies wall with the baby still in his arms. As the companions watched, he replaced one tubular device into its proper box and drew another one out. He waved the device over the slumbering baby, intermittently flicking a button on its side. The slim device whirred, then clicked, and The Doctor hummed in approval. "The scan's finished," he said, turning to face his companions, who entered the room at his beckoning gesture. "This is a Thionic baby."

"Oh," Tegan said, in a voice much sweeter than her usual tone, "look at this little sweetheart." She walked over and put her face very close to the baby, taking in its fine, white hair and rosy skin. "Oh, isn't she just precious?"

"How did you know she was a girl?" asked The Doctor, looking flummoxed. "I had to have a scanner for that!"

"Well, you could have just checked the old-fashioned way, if you'd really wanted to know," Tegan said, "but, as for how I knew…I don't know, I guess she just looked like a girl. She's so tiny, and she's rather chubby. I don't have any idea about Thionic babies, but Earth girls are usually smaller and more chubby."

"Thionic babies are like Thionic adults," The Doctor said, "and are highly telepathic beings who sense the emotional and physical atmosphere of their caretakers to such a fine degree that they can detect as small as two beats' difference in your pulse rate when you're holding them against your heart. They need telepathic parents to keep them in a sort of cocoon of mental stability until they're old enough to control their own telepathy. They're rather like Gallifreyan babies, actually."

"They sound even more high maintenance than human babies," Tegan said. She leaned over further and smiled down at the baby's round face. "It's a good thing she's so cute."

"Such a dependent child, and she was just lying in a garden in the middle of the Parsian satellite," The Doctor said, a dark frown on his face. "There's something very wrong about this situation, Tegan."

"Not all parents are happy to have a child, Doctor," Tegan pointed out, but feeling rather pessimistic for doing so. "On Earth, babies get abandoned every day."

"How terrible," Adric exclaimed. "Your people can be so barbaric, sometimes, Tegan!"

"So, no one ever leaves their baby alone to fend for themselves on your planet?" Tegan said, a little defensively. "Sorry, Adric, but I have a hard time believing that."

"On many planets, abandonment is punishable by death," Nyssa said, seriously. "That wasn't our custom on Traken, but I've heard of civilizations in the universe where both parents would be put to death for that crime."

"Well, if the parents are executed, who takes care of the baby, then?" Tegan asked.

Nyssa shook her head. "Their nearest relatives would adopt the child as penance for his or her parents' shameful act."

"Abandonment isn't exactly common on Gallifrey, either," The Doctor murmured. He paused a moment to adjust the baby in his arms. "Well, abandonment in the physical sense of the word isn't common. One could argue that certain other forms of abandonment are part of our culture…" He cleared his throat. "But, I'm getting distracted from the real issue at hand: Where are Garden's parents, and how can we return her to them?"

"You've named the baby 'Garden'?" Tegan said, her mouth open. "Doctor, that's not a proper name!"

"Well, she's not my baby, and I don't want to give her a Gallifreyan designation, because she's only going to be here for a short time and we don't just hand out names willy-nilly. So, I decided to call her by the place where I found her: in a peace garden."

"So, why not call her 'Peace'?" asked Adric. "That's rather pretty, isn't it?"

"It's much prettier than 'Garden'," Tegan said.

"Yes, but it's so cliché," The Doctor said.

"I think I have to agree with Tegan and Adric on this one, Doctor," Nyssa said, trying not to giggle. "I rather like 'Peace' better."

The Doctor twitched his shoulders indignantly. "Look here, who found this baby and brought her here? I did. I have temporary naming rights. Besides, the word 'Peace'—" He stopped speaking suddenly and looked down at the baby, who had hiccupped loudly as the word 'Peace' passed his lips. "Oh," The Doctor said, rather breathlessly.

"What is it?" all three of his companions asked, anxiously. They thought the baby must be disturbed or experiencing physical discomfort.

"She quite likes that word," The Doctor said. His gaze was riveted on the tiny person in his arms. "That's the strongest telepathic signal I've felt from her all day. When I said, 'Peace'—" the baby hiccupped, and The Doctor gave a delighted smile, "there, she did it again! That was the telepathic equivalent of a smile, or a laugh!"

"I don't have a clue what a telepathic signal is supposed to be," Tegan said, with an answering smile, "but that hiccup was the most adorable thing I've seen in a long time."


	2. Peace of Mind

2.

"Eat this," Tegan ordered, shoving the croissant and coffee under The Doctor's nose. The fierce Australian woman had forced the Time Lord into a chair in the room closest to the infirmary, which happened to be one of the libraries. The Doctor tried to protest. He never ate in his libraries—this was one custom from his home world he could never overcome. Tegan glared at him and said, "You haven't slept or eaten since we landed in the Pars System. I know you don't behave like a normal person, but you do need food. Now, please, Doctor: eat."

"I am a normal Time Lord," The Doctor persisted, stubbornly. He clung tightly to Peace as though the baby could shield him from Tegan's glare. "Humans spend so much time eating and sleeping. It's so terribly inefficient."

"I am not moving from this spot until you eat the croissant." Tegan crossed her arms and tapped her crimson-painted nails against her biceps.

"In case you hadn't noticed, Tegan," The Doctor said, irritated, "my hands are a little occupied, at the moment. So, unless you plan to feed me, yourself—"

"Oh, right," Tegan said, and held out her arms. "Well, give her here, then." When The Doctor hesitated to surrender the baby to her, her face fell. "Doctor, I do know how to hold a baby."

Seeing the suddenly vulnerable look on Tegan's face, The Doctor hastened to explain. "It's nothing against you, Tegan, but Thionic babies require their caretakers to be in supreme control of their thoughts and emotions, and I'm not sure humans can achieve that level of telepathic restraint. I don't…" He trailed off.

"'You don't' what, Doctor?"

The Doctor tucked the blanket more snugly around Peace in an uncharacteristically protective gesture. "I don't want to traumatize Peace any further," he said. "I'm rather afraid of putting her down, to be honest."

Tegan's entire demeanor changed. She melted into the chair next to the Time Lord. "Oh, Doctor, I'm so sorry. I didn't know she would be upset if you let someone else hold her. I'm really quite stupid when it comes to aliens, as you know."

"Yes, well…" The Doctor bit his lip, "I think she might be all right if Nyssa would hold her. Trakenites are telepathic, to a certain extent." He smiled slightly. "I am quite hungry, now that you mention it."

"All right, so let's call Nyssa." Tegan turned around and hollered, "Nyssa! The Doctor needs you!"

"No, Tegan," The Doctor hissed, "you'll wake—" But, it was too late; Peace began to cry loudly, squirming in The Doctor's hold. "Now, look what you've done."

"Sorry," Tegan said, truly regretful. Then, she frowned. "Hey, it's not like it's all my fault. I was just trying to help you!"

"Sometimes, your help can be a bit of a hindrance!"

"I don't think that's at all fair!"

Peace's volume and pitch shifted into an ear-piercing note. Tegan and The Doctor both flinched. "Apparently, she does not like to be woken by shouts," The Doctor said, trying to quiet the baby with a small rocking motion.

"What's the matter, Doctor?" asked Nyssa, as she and Adric hurried into the library. "We heard Tegan shout. Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," The Doctor snapped. Peace cried louder and waved her tiny arms, hitting The Doctor's pale jumper as she did so. The contact with the baby's minuscule fists made The Doctor start. "Oh," he said, sounding shocked, "oh, of course. I'm being very thick, today, aren't I, Peace?"

"Is she all right?" Adric asked. "I've got some nutrient gels, if she needs sustenance. Or, maybe we should find some milk? Do Thionic babies drink milk?"

"She's reacting to my agitation," The Doctor said. "I'm tired and hungry, as Tegan pointed out, and when I got annoyed at Tegan, I lost control of my telepathic aura." He shook his head and sent Tegan an apologetic look. "I do apologize, Tegan: here I was, explaining how inferior humans' telepathy was, and I've gone and upset Peace, myself."

"It's all right, Doctor. I've at least slept and eaten since the Pars System fiasco. I shouldn't have been so pushy when you haven't had either in days."

The Doctor made a noise of acknowledgement, but his focus was directed mainly on Peace. He took several deep breaths and relaxed into the plush chair on which he sat. His fingers stroked her cheeks in the way Adric had simulated in front of the other companions earlier that day. Within moments, Peace's cries died down. She stared up at The Doctor, her crystalline blue eyes fixated on his face. Although she didn't fall back asleep, she curled up into the Time Lord's arms and made no further disagreements with this position.

The three other TARDIS inhabitants cast one another significant looks while The Doctor dropped his head onto the high back of his chair. "Here, Nyssa," The Doctor said, in a voice of forced tranquility, "take Peace, and think only of safety, warmth, and comfort. Keep your telepathic signals calm and welcoming."

"Doctor, some Trakenites are nearly as telepathically dull as humans," Nyssa said, but she stretched out her arms, nonetheless. The Doctor stood and carefully transferred his burden to the young Trakenite woman, who maintained slow, even breaths and a placid expression as she received the Thionic baby. "There, there, Peace," Nyssa cooed, with a smile. "Give The Doctor a moment to eat and drink, before Tegan force feeds him."

"Don't give her any ideas, Nyssa."

Peace seemed intrigued by the new face hovering above her. Nyssa's dark, spiraled hair, peaches and cream skin, and pale blue eyes provided a new color palette for the baby to analyze. She wiggled her head side to side to gain a better angle against Nyssa's arm, so she could take in more of her new caretaker. "Hello," Nyssa said, and couldn't stop smiling.

"She likes you," The Doctor said, smiling, as well.

"You can still feel her?" asked Adric, surprised. "Even when you're not touching her?"

"Yes, yes, that's how high-level telepaths function with their young. They have constant telepathic communication. For parents, the connection lasts for a lifetime. You see, on Gallifrey—"

"Eat, Doctor!" Tegan said, and pushed the croissant even closer to him.

Nyssa looked up from Peace long enough to mouth 'mating rituals' at Adric while The Doctor made a defiant retort to Tegan's demand. Tegan would not relent, and he quickly surrendered and devoured the croissant in three bites. Adric stifled a snort of amusement and Nyssa nearly smirked, but the two teenagers returned to tranquil expressions when their older companions looked their way.

* * *

Within hours of being discovered by The Doctor, Peace the Thionic baby quickly settled into a bizarre little life on board the TARDIS. Because of her telepathic nature, The Doctor and Nyssa were the only two people on board the time-and-space machine who could completely satisfy her needs. Tegan and Adric took their turns holding and entertaining the baby when the telepathy-sensitive beings had to shower or eat or lock themselves in a room to regain their sanity.

The first time Adric had been forced to hold the baby, he had panicked and had nearly dropped her, but he had quickly learned how to cradle her gently in his arms. Tegan had no problems with the mechanics of childcare, but she did lack the calming aura to keep Peace from squirming incessantly, her human emotions too much stimulation for a baby without any control over her own telepathic abilities. What Tegan lacked in emotional control, she tried to make up in exuberant affection. When it was her turn to watch Peace, she would borrow The Doctor's sonic screwdriver and shine different colored lights on the wall to capture the baby's attention. She would stoke the baby's head and hands. Sometimes, she would chatter on in a ridiculous, high-pitched voice while Peace listened in fascination.

The times the other three TARDIS travelers spent taking care of Peace were relatively few. The Doctor was surprisingly attentive to his new charge. He held Peace on one arm and steered the TARDIS with the other, talking shop with Adric and Nyssa all the while. If his ship rolled, The Doctor would calmly grab hold of the nearest stationary part and stay upright while Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan pitched to the floor. The Time Lord made sure Peace never mussed a hair on her head or acquired a single bruise on her small, chubby body, and he would scold any of his companions if they mishandled her. However, when he caught the others giving him amused looks, The Doctor would declare firmly, "I'm going to locate her family as soon as possible. She's got to go home within the week!"

With Adric and Nyssa as his assistants, The Doctor followed up on his declaration. He ran more scans on Peace to pinpoint strands of her DNA for familial traits, then posted trans-spatial messages to the Thionic planetary news centers in an attempt to find the baby's family. The TARDIS crew acknowledged that the most likely scenario was that the baby had been kidnapped or orphaned far away from Thion, but they wanted to try the simplest route to finding her relatives first. "We'll wait in the vortex for a few days, to see if Thion will contact us," The Doctor said. His companions had not objected.

By her fourth day on the TARDIS, Peace had a cradle scrounged up from a forgotten room full of Gallifreyan paraphernalia, a set of three outfits scavenged from the huge wardrobe from which The Doctor picked his own clothes, and a modest box full of objects that could serve as toys for a baby with a physiology and developmental pattern similar to a Gallifreyan. She slept in Nyssa's bedroom, lulled by the Trakenite girl's soft breathing and peaceful mind. Then, every morning, The Doctor would steal quietly into Nyssa's room and take the baby out before she could wake the teenager.

For reasons neither Tegan nor The Doctor could fathom, Adric had taken it upon himself to find the perfect formula for Peace to eat. Tegan would assure him that cow's milk with added supplement would work well enough for a week or two, but the Alzarian boy insisted that a baby as complex as Peace required sophisticated nourishment. He worked on the right mixture for several hours, then emerged from the lab with a triumphant shout. When he presented the bottle of "refined" formula to The Doctor, the Time Lord found it impossible to disappoint him. They fed the formula to the baby, and The Doctor reported that her hunger seemed more satisfied than in previous feedings.

Adric beamed, and his older companions both smiled until he left the room. Tegan faced The Doctor. "You were lying about the formula. Peace was just fine with the cow's milk."

"Tegan," The Doctor said, "sometimes, you have to stretch the truth about a telepathic baby's digestive harmony." As Tegan rolled her eyes, he said, much more seriously, "Adric needs to be useful. He feels threatened by this new person on the TARDIS."

"What?" Tegan posed in comedic shock. "You've sensed something about someone's emotions that I haven't? Are you feeling all right, Doctor?"

"Oh, you think you're so hilarious," The Doctor said, but Peace giggled in his arms, betraying his affronted air. Tegan laughed at him, but it was a kind laugh.


	3. About the World

3.

"Look what Adric and I made, Doctor," Nyssa said, on Peace's fifth day on the TARDIS. The Doctor had kept the ship in the vortex with coordinates pre-programmed to take them to Thion at first word from the planet's child services. To entertain themselves in limbo, Adric and Nyssa had disappeared into their favorite laboratory suite. Tegan and The Doctor had not seen them for almost a full day. The Australian woman had worried that the two teenagers had blown themselves up or inhaled deadly chemicals, but The Doctor had dismissed her fears.

Now, the two genius children had emerged and stood in the console room. They proudly presented their newest experiment to The Doctor. "It's something Nyssa saw on one of the info cards in the library databanks," Adric said.

"It's a baby carrier," The Doctor said, amazed. He held up the strappy contraption and scrutinized it thoroughly. "Circa Earth, in the twenty-first century," he added, after some thought.

"That's where I found it in the records," Nyssa supplied. "I recalled that you once mentioned how very affectionate humans are toward their offspring, so I thought starting with Earth childrearing devices would be the best idea to help Peace settle in."

"Settle in?" The Doctor said. "No, listen, we can't keep her—"

"It's called a papoose," Adric supplied. "Isn't that a funny word? Humans have some strange vocabularies."

"It's a North American Indian word," Tegan said, and her companions looked at her in surprise. "What?" she asked, somewhat defensively, "I know about my own planet, okay? Papooses are what Indians used to carry their kids in."

Nyssa stepped forward. "It goes on like this, Doctor…"

Before he knew it, The Doctor had been fitted with a papoose, and Peace was strapped to his chest like a sack of potatoes thrown on backwards. Once the initial awkwardness of the added weight faded, the Time Lord found he could continue with his usual activities without any fuss. Peace herself seemed delighted with her new mode of transport. Over the next several hours, she was content to hang in her papoose as The Doctor performed some routine maintenance in one of the less used rooms of the TARDIS. She didn't seem to mind that her small face was pressed tightly against the cream-colored fabric of The Doctor's jumper. Occasionally, she would sigh or whine, and her telepathic caretaker would soothe her with peaceful thoughts and a stroke on her hand or cheek.

A loud pinging noise brought The Doctor out of his tinkering meditation. He left the piloting adjustment room and walked back to the console, unconsciously bouncing his steps to make Peace's telepathic signals turn warm and buttery, as they had a habit of doing when she was swayed back and forth. Adric had arrived at the console before him, but the boy could not stop the chime as it replayed over and over. "What's that noise?" Adric asked. "I've never heard it before. It's obnoxious!"

"Yes, it is, a bit," The Doctor said, absently, as he typed in his access code on the TARDIS's messaging system. "That's a planetary transmission alert. Thion's Children's Welfare Bureau sent us a communication package." He tapped on the message symbol and studied the screen as the message loaded.

After a few minutes, Adric grew tired of waiting for feedback from the older man. "Is it good news?" When The Doctor looked up at him with a bleak expression, the teenager's shoulders dropped. "It's really bad news."

The Doctor took a deep breath, tapped the screen to dismiss the message, and said, "Peace's parents were killed in a toxic gas leak two months ago. She had no living relatives-which is highly unusual for a Thionic baby—so she was placed in an orphanage. But, according to the Bureau, she was stolen from the orphanage a week ago. Since she couldn't be found anywhere on Thion, the Bureau assumed she had been taken off-world and sold."

"And they didn't think it was their responsibility to find the people who stole her?" Adric demanded. "They were just going to let her get taken away and made into a slave?"

"Orphans on Thion are shamed to the point of neglect, Adric," The Doctor said, with a coldness in his eyes that Adric had learned to associate with what The Doctor called 'cultural discrepancies' between his own morals and a foreign planet's customs. "If a baby is not adopted within a year, he or she is put into cryostorage and introduced at a later date, or…"

"Or what?" Adric asked, feeling ill.

"Or they're given a peaceful, dignified death," The Doctor finished. He compulsively patted Peace on the back, rubbing his hand in circles to quiet her sudden burst of babble.

Adric stared at the Time Lord, horrified. At length, he said, "I take it back. Earth is not nearly as barbaric as Thion."

"Well, differences in culture—"

"Doctor, it's horrific, and there's no justification for it."

The Doctor looked down at Peace, whose shining blue eyes watched his face with bright curiosity. "You're right," he agreed, at length. "I think it's time we did a little kidnapping of our own, don't you, Adric?"

"I'm pretty sure kidnapping is your specialty, Doctor."

"I was never so cheeky when I was your age," muttered the Time Lord, as he spun them all out into the vortex.

Adric didn't believe The Doctor's comment for one second.

* * *

"What I can't figure out," The Doctor said, the next day, "is why someone would abandon a baby they had gone to so much trouble to steal. I mean, Thion isn't a technological wasteland. They have security cameras on every street corner." He stopped talking to focus completely on the task of fitting Peace's hands and feet with snug warmers.

"That is the question, I suppose," Nyssa agreed. She stood before the large mirror in the TARDIS's wardrobe room and tried on a multi-colored knit cap. The cap matched almost perfectly with the thick blue parka she had found. She smiled in triumph and shoved the hat further over her voluminous hair.

"It really doesn't make any sense," The Doctor continued, and then, "Nyssa, would you hand me that other hat?"

Nyssa complied, tossing the second knit cap to her Time Lord mentor. "That's going to be much too big for Peace," she said, as she watched The Doctor fit it on the baby's head.

"I'll just roll up the edges," The Doctor said, and followed up on his words. Peace endured his ministrations with a rather pensive expression. The Doctor switched back to his former topic without a transition. "I think it's rather paranoid to suspect that a baby was planted on a space station specifically to lure you into taking her into your TARDIS."

Nyssa whirled away from the mirror and stared at The Doctor. "You think Peace might be some kind of trap? But, how? And by what enemy?"

"That's why I said it was paranoid," The Doctor said. He stared down at Peace, who stared back, happy now that the particolored hat was wrapped around her head.

"Who would do such a thing, Doctor?" asked Nyssa. "She's just a little baby. Why would someone use her to get to you?"

"Oh, there are so many who would not hesitate," The Doctor said. He gently buttoned the tiny coat he had scrounged up from the TARDIS's lost and found, while Peace made cooing noises and kicked her feet. "There are so many mad, vicious beings in this universe, Nyssa. They have no respect for innocence or fragility. They would think nothing of sacrificing a defenseless child to their purposes."

Nyssa shook her head. "I can't understand it."

"Neither can I." The Doctor's eyes were as hard as crystal, and his posture had stilled into that pent-up energy which Nyssa associated with major confrontations with the forces of evil. Then, Peace made one of her clumsy baby movements and swatted The Doctor on the cheek. The Time Lord started as if he had been electrocuted.

Nyssa couldn't help the giggle that broke free at his wide-eyed expression. "She's like that one Earth film you showed us," the Trakenite said, "the one where the people got slapped with fish!"

"Did you hear that?" The Doctor asked the baby, scandalized. "Nyssa's calling you a Monty Python prop! What a thing to say to you!"

The tension had been effectively dissolved. Nyssa and The Doctor left the wardrobe room and joined Adric and Tegan in the control room as the four companions had previously planned. Tegan and Adric had donned similar winter clothing as Nyssa and Peace. The Doctor had added only a red woolen scarf to his usual outfit (including the papoose) as a concession to the cold climate of the planet they intended to visit.  
"Doesn't she just look adorable in that getup?" Tegan gushed. She took Peace from The Doctor's arms and waltzed about the console room, singing, 'Frosty the Snowman'. Peace squealed in delight.

"I'm telling you," Adric said, "people from Earth—they're just a little bizarre, sometimes."

"Their nurturing techniques are just different from Alzarians', that's all, Adric," The Doctor said.

"I used to think it was just Tegan, but now, I'm not so sure."

"I can hear everything you're saying," Tegan said, to the tune of 'Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow.' Nyssa laughed, again.

"Come on, let's go!" The Doctor said, striding toward the TARDIS doors. "Remember: we are here only to sightsee. We are not taking Peace anywhere we intend to start a conflict—"

"You're telling us this?" Tegan asked, disbelievingly. "Since when do _we_ ever start anything?"

The Doctor ignored her. "—and if we see a hint of trouble, we're going to hightail it back to the TARDIS. Understood?" His companions nodded, so he went on, "Zamimnon is a frozen world. It has spent the past seven hundred years covered in a medium snow. Many of its small bodies of water have been iced over so long, they're considered shortcuts if the traffic is too heavy on an overpass. We should fit right in. The last time I was here, the inhabitants were nearly identical to Earth people in appearance."

"What I want to know is: can we build snowmen?" Tegan asked, as she slipped Peace into the papoose on The Doctor's front.

"The snow is perfect for molding," The Doctor said, with a mischievous smile. "I discovered that on my first trip to this planet. I got my friend Sarah Jane right in the kisser, as the Americans would describe it."

"Yes!" Tegan threw up one fist in the air. "I declare a snowball fight on Nyssa and Adric!"

"Hey!" Adric said. "Why not The Doctor?"

"Because he's holding the baby, obviously, "Tegan said. "Which was a clever strategy, Doctor."

The four TARDIS crew members piled out of the time-and-space-machine and into a winter wonderland. Zamimnon looked like an alien version of a Hollywood Christmas movie set: snow drifted in puffs over a landscape covered in white and blue. They had landed in a fairly deserted spot. The only sign of civilization was a futuristic farming hut in the distance. The three TARDIS guests let out excited whoops and raced out into the cold. The Doctor trailed behind them, grinning at his friends' antics. Tegan wasted no time in making snowballs and pelting Adric. Adric retaliated by constructing a makeshift wall to shield himself, then hurling sheets of snow over the top. Nyssa decided to side with Tegan. The two girls kept up a steady barrage of powdery missiles, and Adric hollered about how unfair it was that they had ganged up on him.

The Doctor had planned this outing in response to the restlessness he had sensed from Adric and Tegan at being stuck in the TARDIS for so long. They rarely spent more than a couple days inside the vast machine, but Peace's presence had kept them adrift in the Vortex for a week. Although he was not the most forthcoming when it came to emotions, The Doctor could observe them in his friends. He felt glad that he had entered Zamimnon into the navigational system. The glacial planet had always been popular with his humanoid companions, and it had not disappointed him this time.

He was so busy watching the older companions play that he didn't notice Peace's reaction to the new setting until her telepathic signals bubbled in his mind like a very fine champagne. A bright smile appeared on The Doctor's face out of pure reflex to the baby's mental wonder. He reached out and let a snowflake rest on his hand. He held it close so Peace could see the way it sparkled against his skin. Then, he attempted something he had not tried before: He communicated a word to Peace through the connection in their minds. _Snowflake, _The Doctor thought, trying to encapsulate everything about that tiny shard of ice into nine letters. _Snowflake. _

Peace wiggled so enthusiastically, The Doctor was afraid she might fall out of the papoose. Her mind rejoiced at this new stimulation. With a slight twinge in his thoracic spaces, The Doctor wondered if this was the first word Peace had ever been introduced to, telepathically. Normally, a Thionic baby would 'hear' its mother's name on the day of its birth, and its father's name on the day after. But, what if Peace had never received that gift?

"Listen, Peace," The Doctor whispered. He pointed to the snow-laden earth and began to think. _Ground. _He pointed to the sky. _Sky. Clouds. Snow. _He went on and on, walking in a slow line, never straying too far from his bigger charges but introducing his tiniest charge to a host of new words. Peace drank in the attention like it was water in a desert.

"What are you doing, Doctor?" Nyssa asked brightly, as she and her snow-battle comrades sprinted up to him.

The Doctor looked at each one of them. He etched their names clearly in his mind, passing the knowledge to Peace. _Tegan. Adric. Nyssa. _He couldn't stop the rush of associated memories from flowing out with the words. Other words fell out, like _Brave, Foolish, Kind._ Peace's mind echoed back a tiny fraction of the affection and loyalty he had accidentally unleashed, but the feelings were her own. They surprised The Doctor profoundly.

"I'm teaching Peace about the world," The Doctor said, but none of his companions understood the double meaning to the phrase.


	4. Homesickness

**Author's Note: Stuff gets real in this chapter, ya'll. Future seriousness coming!**

**Enjoy!**

4.

With the knowledge of Peace's parents' deaths and Thion's apparent disregard for her safety, The Doctor and his crew were rather at a loss about what to do with their fifth passenger. They couldn't return Peace to Thion and knowingly surrender her to cryogenic stasis and death, but they didn't know which planet to visit to try and find her an adoptive family. So, for lack of an alternative, The Doctor did what he did best: he travelled. But this time, he had a baby in tow.

The Doctor's companions saw the presence of a baby on board as a way to visit places they had wanted to see for ages. For several days, the TARDIS crew went to calm planets and took leisurely trips on foreign soil. They would pass the baby around each trip, so that each person didn't have to carry her all the time. Nyssa wanted to see the silk-crystal beaches of Nerium Four, so they set the TARDIS down on the shore and walked barefoot along dazzling silver sands, collecting shells the size of dinner plates as they went. Adric begged The Doctor for an adventure on Bookoo Gurruku, a planet with one of the largest life-size mazes in the universe. The four older companions spent hours dashing about the twisting white walls, calling out to one another and generally getting hopelessly lost. Tegan didn't have any particular destination she wanted to see except Heathrow Airport, and since she couldn't have those coordinates, she asked The Doctor to surprise her with a beautiful planet. For the first time in their acquaintance, The Time Lord did not disappoint her: he took them all to a world with a name too convoluted to pronounce, where the sunsets were layered in distinct stripes across the sky like layers of rock and the wind created music as it blew through the deep mountain passes. They all stood, enthralled, as they drank in the beauty of the planet around them. Then, Peace began to sneeze violently, and they discovered that Thionic lifeforms were slightly allergic to the planet's atmosphere. The Doctor beat a hasty retreat with his tiny charge, leaving his three older companions to enjoy the view for another half hour before they went on their way.

Of course, the tranquil visits could only last so long before The Doctor's penchant for disaster crept back into their lives. On a planet inhabited by reptilian humanoids, The Doctor had to hastily explain that he had not brought Peace as a meal to be shared between himself and the reptilian leader. He ended up running for his and the baby's life after inadvertently insulting the leader and his wife. The next day, Adric accidentally exploded baby formula all over the TARDIS console, shorting out several vital circuits which Nyssa frantically repaired before the time-and-space-machine spun into the gravitational pull of a large sun. Tegan and Peace nearly toppled off of a high viewing platform on a city built in the clouds, and only The Doctor's terror-stricken reflexes saved them. He wrapped his arms around them both and simply fell backwards, dropping to the platform's deck in a heap of limbs and multi-colored clothes.

There were domestic hiccups, too, and although they didn't carry the same danger as those which occurred on foreign planets, they were stressful in their own right. Tegan got fed up with the electronic book she wanted to read and went to find The Doctor to explain it to her, only to discover that he had fallen deeply asleep on the library floor with Peace on top of him. The baby was sleeping just as hard, her little face perfectly still as it rested against The Doctor's collar. Tegan was arrested by the unexpected sight of the manic Time Lord lying so peacefully on the Gallifreyan-red rug with an adorable baby in his arms. She felt moved to drape a nearby throw over baby and alien, and was so distracted by her task that she didn't notice Nyssa's entrance into the library. Nyssa proceeded to bring up the topic which Tegan dearly wished had never been conceived about her and the Doctor: mating rituals, and their possible existence on the TARDIS within teenager earshot. Whispering fiercely at Nyssa to stop being silly and mind her own business proved to be a bad idea, for The Doctor woke as Tegan was still crouched next to him with her hands on his shoulders. The ensuing startled argument between human stewardess and Time Lord was one for the record books, if Adric and Nyssa had kept records of every time their older companions rowed.

Adric and Nyssa had their own problems with the role of caretaker. Nyssa found herself stuck with Peace on several occasions when The Doctor couldn't hold her. This unavoidable baby-sitting cut into the Trakenite girl's experiment time, which irritated Adric to no end. He would complain at Nyssa, loudly, whenever she was unavailable. Finally, Nyssa would shove Peace into his arms and say, "Well, if you want me to calibrate the computational processors so badly, then you have to think very happy thoughts while I do it!" Adric always fumbled around with Peace until he was sure he couldn't drop her, and then he would stand awkwardly bouncing the baby up and down while Nyssa tweaked code strands and polished computer monitors.

Peace herself was still bubbly. She seemed above all the stressors which beset her older companions. She loved bath time, food time, and diaper time, as long as she had cuddle time, as well. But, she had definitely become very attached to The Doctor. She waved her hands and babbled whenever The Doctor spoke to her, and her mind seemed to glow in his telepathic presence. Even with Nyssa's steady telepathic signature as substitute, she would become restless if she was separated from her Time Lord caretaker for more than a couple of hours. At first, The Doctor tried to resist Peace's obvious preference. "We can't allow her to grow too dependent on me," he would protest, when Nyssa or Tegan or Adric tried to hand the baby to him. "I'm not her father; I can't keep her. She'll be hurt when we give her to an adoptive family, if we let her grow too close." Peace did not understand these reasons for their separation, and her restlessness would turn to lonely wailing if she was not given back to the Time Lord. Peace's misery made everyone on board the TARDIS sad, too. Against his better judgment, The Doctor gave in and carried the Thionic baby in the papoose on an almost twenty four-hour basis. He got into the habit of carrying her with him on errands onto planets which he deemed safe.

None of the mishaps from the weeks before compared to one that happened in Peace's fourth week aboard the TARDIS. Quite without his consent, The Doctor found himself in the midst of interplanetary conflict on one of his simple errands. He left the TARDIS to find a particular soap made for infants which could only be bought in two trade unions in the universe. He didn't know that these same business empires also happened to reach a state of war at exactly the same time The Doctor had chosen to visit their star system.

He had taken Peace with him to give Nyssa some time alone in the TARDIS to tend to her experiments. When The Doctor literally walked into a turf war between two teams of corporate-hired thugs, he barely had time to register the fact that bullets were flying before he came under fire, himself. Luckily, The Doctor had enough sense to dive around the nearest solid object, his body curled around Peace to protect her from stray bullets. No one in the fight over business real estate seemed to care that he was a bystander with an infant in his arms, which made The Doctor angry enough that he unleashed his icy fury on them and cowed the opposing factions into a ceasefire until he could buy his soap. Then, he stayed around long enough to mock their ridiculous turf war and to shame them over firing at unarmed civilians. By the time he stalked off with Peace and a bar of soap clutched tightly to his chest, the mercenaries had slunk back into their respective headquarters and the other civilians on the street had come out of hiding.

When he finally closed the doors to the TARDIS behind him, The Doctor leaned against them and tried to calm himself down. Peace was crying obstreperously, telepathically overloaded by her caretaker's fear and rage. The Doctor compulsively smoothed two fingers gently against Peace's face, an unconscious, soothing gesture which carried a mental message: _Don't worry, I've got you, we're safe, we're perfectly safe, see, we made it home. _

"Doctor?" Adric's head popped up from behind the console.

The Doctor started so violently that he sent Peace into another round of crying. "Adric, must you be so impossible?" snapped The Doctor, then immediately said, "No—I'm sorry. It wasn't your fault."

"Doctor, what happened?" Adric asked, looking very alarmed. The teenager came out from around the console and stood close to his mentor, peering into his face. "You're shaking. You're pale. Doctor, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," The Doctor said, but he passed Peace to Adric, "but you should hold her, a while. I'm too—" he waved a hand, inadequately, "I can't calm down."

"But, why? What's wrong with the planet? Did you get the soap?"

"Oh, I got the soap," The Doctor said, eyes snapping, "but I had to wade through a street fight to get it. There were idiots with guns—bullets flying everywhere, Adric!—and it was all over some minor technicality between two corporations. Sometimes, I wish the very idea of money didn't exist."

Adric looked nearly as pale as The Doctor. "You mean—and you were holding Peace—" The teenagers swallowed. "Oh, Doctor, that's horrible. Did you stop them?"

"Of course, but not for forty minutes or so. People could have been killed—people who had nothing to do with either trade union." The Doctor bounced his head against the TARDIS doors. "Peace could have been shot, Adric, and I could have done absolutely nothing to stop it."

"You would have been shot, too," Adric pointed out. He knew The Doctor well enough to know that the older man would rather die than let an innocent person come to harm. The thought of leaving the TARDIS to look for the Time Lord and the baby only to discover their bullet-riddled corpses chilled him like an icy wind.

"This is why she can't become attached to me," The Doctor said, wearily. "We can't keep her, Adric."

"No one ever said we should, Doctor."

"I know, but…" The Doctor trailed off as he stared at Peace, who had burrowed herself against Adric's chest. He took another deep breath, running a hand through his silky blonde hair and leaving parts of it sticking up.

Adric didn't point out how much The Doctor's hair resembled the baby's fine platinum strands, and how anyone could mistake her for The Doctor's own child, and no one would mind if he just sort of claimed her as his daughter…The Alzarian boy shook his head. He couldn't allow those kind of thoughts to enter his head. The Doctor just said they couldn't keep Peace forever, and he was right. It was just so difficult to see when she was so soft and warm, nestled into his sternum with her pudgy hand grasping ineffectually at his shirt.

"I think the truth is that we've all gotten attached to _her_," The Doctor admitted. He continued to stare at the baby, a twist to his lips that seemed a tad embarrassed, and then he took her from Adric's arms and walked with her across the console room. As he walked through the far doorway, Adric saw him press a very light kiss to the baby's forehead. Peace snuggled her head further under The Doctor's chin, and the Time Lord seemed unable to resist the smile that passed over his face.

It was Adric's turn to be embarrassed. He turned quickly from the uncharacteristic show of affection and set to work on the vortex fluctuation meters in the console. The Doctor must have truly been afraid of losing Peace during the firefight to indulge in such an overt gesture. The teenager banished the touching thought and focused instead on mechanics and temporal engineering, sinking into more familiar territory and unwilling to dwell on the consequences of The Doctor's affection.

* * *

"Shh, c'mon, now, Peace," Tegan cajoled the baby, waving a bright orange stuffed animal in front of Peace's face, "give us a little quiet time, huh? The Doctor just stepped out for a bit. He'll be back, I promise!"

Peace continued to scream. She had started screaming as soon as The Doctor left the TARDIS, taking his warm arms and his telepathic aura with him. Nyssa was very busy learning how to clean the navigational circuits on the console, and so she was unavailable to calm Peace while The Doctor was away. Adric had tied himself up in one of the TARDIS's many minor malfunctions and gave off the very Doctor-ly air that he did not want to be disturbed for anything less than impending doom. This left Tegan to mind Peace to the best of her telepathically-dull abilities. Unsurprisingly, her methods did little to alleviate Peace's panic.

Four hours later, the human woman in charge of a telepathic baby in The Doctor's absence was very near a few screams herself. Peace stopped her mind-scrambling cries for about ten minutes an hour, to regain her strength, and then she started again. She screamed if Tegan held her, and she screamed if Tegan put her down. Her little face turned red and her kumquat-sized fists clenched. She waved all four limbs and rolled back and forth, but when Tegan gathered her up to soothe her, Peace struggled and squawked unhappily. Several times, the baby would rub her face against Tegan's hand, seeking telepathic comfort, and when she found none, big tears would roll down her face as it fell into the picture of desolation.

Now, as she held the stuffed animal up, Tegan felt tears in her own eyes. "Oh, please, Peace," she said, in exhaustion, "please—stop crying. I don't know what to do for you—I really have no idea! The Doctor's coming back. He'll hold you and do his weird telepathy thing for you. But, the thing is, sweetheart, he might be gone for a long time, still—"

Peace's lower lip wobbled, and she let out two hiccuping sobs.

"Oh, no," Tegan said, "Peace, please—"

The sobs multiplied in number and sound. True to form, Peace started wailing after ten minutes of calm. Tegan stood up and stared down at the baby on the floor who reached up chubby arms in a gesture that appeared to be universal. Picking Peace up, Tegan cradled her close and jostled her gently. Predictably, Peace searched for the right sort of contact; she flapped a clumsy hand around Tegan's chin and mouth, then nudged at her chest when that failed. Having found no reassuring telepathic message or double heartbeat, Peace writhed in Tegan's grasp. When she nearly dumped the baby onto the floor, Tegan's patience snapped.

The former flight stewardess charged into the console room like a rampaging rhino. "Nyssa!" Tegan shouted, with Peace in her arms, "I have tried for four solid hours to quiet this baby, so it's barking well your turn!"

Nyssa and Adric—who had moved into the console room as he followed his own TARDIS malfunction—took in Tegan's haggard appearance with aghast expressions. "We haven't heard anything," Adric said, stupidly.

"No, of course you haven't, because you've both been up here, having a nice chat! One of you take this baby, before I lose my mind!"

Exchanging wary glances, Nyssa and Adric both dropped their instruments and went to Tegan. Peace was still crying. When Adric took her from Tegan's arms, she dropped her head against his knuckles in another quest, then pushed back on his arms with her body. "What is she doing?" Adric asked frantically, as he scrambled not to drop the baby.

"The same thing she's been doing since The Doctor left to follow that distress signal," Tegan said. "She's trying to connect to a telepath, but I make a lousy Time Lord, I guess, because she won't let me hold her for more than twenty minutes at a time."

"Let me try," Nyssa said, authoritatively. She held out her arms and Adric transferred Peace into her hands. "Let's see, Peace," she murmured, over Peace's screams, "will this help?" She ran her fingers down the baby's face in the same soothing caress as The Doctor. Peace was transfixed for a moment, staring at Nyssa's fingers. She relaxed against the Trakenite teenager's torso. "There, that's better, isn't it?" Nyssa said, smiling in satisfaction.

Peace let Nyssa stroke her face for another ten seconds or so, and then she pressed her forehead more firmly against the teenager's fingers. Nyssa did not meet Peace's expectations from that action, for she gave a disappointed whine, then started crying again. Nyssa was flummoxed. "But, it was working, wasn't it?" she asked her two companions, while Peace arched her back and stiffened her arms and legs.

"Who knows?" Tegan said. She sagged against the wall and put a hand to her forehead. "I've done everything I can think of, and none of it worked."

"She misses The Doctor," Adric said. "That's all there is to it. She wants The Doctor, and she knows we're not him. Even Nyssa doesn't have the same telepathic signature."

Nyssa patted Peace's belly. "Shh, it's all right, Peace—"

"I've _tried that_," Tegan said, irritably.

"Look at her." Nyssa held Peace out from her body and studied her as she cried. "She's absolutely miserable."

"She looks like she's going to burst a blood vessel, soon," Adric said, worriedly.

Nyssa sighed. "All this stress, psychological and physical, can't be good for a baby."

Tegan slapped the wall next to her. "Oh, where—is—The—Doctor?! He needs to look sharp and march on home! I don't care if that distress signal has to beep for another thirteen years, until Peace is in secondary school!"

"This is what The Doctor was afraid of," Adric said, suddenly, leaning against the console. "He tried to tell us to hold her more, to keep the number of hours he kept her more balanced, but we didn't listen."

"Well, you can't exactly blame us," Tegan said. "How were we supposed to know that a telepathic baby will scream itself into a nervous breakdown if it's away from its—" she stopped, looking shocked.

"Its what, Tegan?" Adric prodded. When Tegan only looked more discomfited he supplied, "You were about to say, 'father', weren't you? That's exactly what The Doctor meant. He didn't want to become Peace's telepathic parent, because when we give her up, she'll act just like this."

"Babies didn't act like this on Traken," Nyssa said. She passed Peace to Adric. "Do you think that Gallifreyan babies act like this, though? Is that how The Doctor knew that it was a bad idea to allow Peace to get attached to him?"

"No," The Doctor's voice said, suddenly, "although this behavior is similar to telepathic homesickness, it's something altogether different, I think."

"Doctor!" Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric shouted, relieved.

"Give her to me." The Doctor didn't waste time on a return greeting. He went to Adric and swept Peace out of his arms. Instantly, the baby's screams dropped to a more bearable volume. She fussed a little as The Doctor ran his hand over her legs and belly, an intent frown on his face, but she quieted even further when he laid two fingers on her cheek. "Poor Peace," The Doctor said, in the soft voice no one heard beyond his interactions with the baby, "what is wrong with you, dear? You're so very distraught."

"She missed you," Tegan began, but The Doctor held up a hand to cut her off.

"Not now, Tegan. I need to concentrate. There's something wrong, here. What is it, Peace? What did you need to tell me?" The Doctor put his ear to the baby's chest, then moved it to her stomach. Peace squirmed slightly, but compared to her efforts to jump out of Tegan and Adric's arms, the movements were negligible. The Doctor's three older companions felt very inadequate as they watched the baby relax further in the crook of the Time Lord's arm.

"Is she hurt, Doctor?" Tegan asked, twisting her hands anxiously. "She's been crying for four hours. I did give her some formula, and I tried to get her to sleep, but nothing worked."

"I held her, too," Nyssa said. "We thought she must just be missing you, because she wouldn't calm down for anything."

"Gallifreyan babies, and all telepathic babies, to a certain extent, do experience a kind of aching homesickness when they're separated from their parent or caretaker too long," The Doctor said. While he spoke, he strode toward the door which led to the inner reaches of the TARDIS. His companions followed him without a word. "I didn't see it much, firsthand, because most Time Lords are raised in a communal nursery, of sorts, when they're infants. It's rather complicated, and it doesn't make much sense to outsiders, but basically, whoever a Time Lord baby is exposed to most telepathically is their comfort giver. Take that person away, and they feel as though they've been thrust into a bucket of ice water and given several slaps about the ears, too. If a baby's caretaker is very cruel, they can use telepathic homesickness as a punishment tool."

"That's terrible!" Tegan gasped.

"Depending on which House on Gallifrey you ask, it's either very effective or very traumatic," The Doctor said. He bent and pressed his face against Peace's forehead. Tegan soon realized that he was checking the baby's temperature. "I'm inclined on the traumatic side of the fence," The Doctor added, "and, thankfully, so is my House, for the most part. We have very careful caretakers. My children and grandchildren didn't have their entire security in the world around them yanked out from under them like a rug on a regular basis."

Behind The Doctor's back, Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan all gave one another enlightened glances. They knew, now: The Doctor was a true father. They watched him try to soothe the crying baby and recognized the motions as practiced, if perhaps a little rusty.

"Where are we going, Doctor?" Nyssa finally asked, as they tried to keep up with the Time Lord's ground-eating pace.

"The infirmary," The Doctor answered, and said nothing more.

Once they were inside the infirmary, Tegan and Adric stayed closed to the walls while The Doctor and Nyssa went to work. The Doctor laid Peace on a warm table and maintained physical contact with her, while Nyssa fetched the scanners he needed. "Bring the one with the red tip, too," The Doctor said. He still spoke in the warm, light tone he used to put Peace at ease, but his companions saw the stress on his face.

Nyssa turned on all the scanners and lined them up for The Doctor to use. The Time Lord operated the machines one-handed. His other hand remained on Peace's belly, which soothed her and kept her in place. After what seemed like hours, he finally straightened and shut off the last scanner. He leaned over the table and took several deep breaths. Nyssa put a hand on his arm. "Doctor," she said, "I know that face. Tell us what's wrong."

"Hold her," The Doctor ordered Nyssa, picking up Peace to hand her over to the Trakenite. Peace seized his thumb with one of her tiny hands and refused to let go. She mewled like a hungry kitten when Nyssa managed to pull her away. Then, she turned her face from Nyssa's chest in a clear rejection. "It's no good, Doctor," Nyssa said, "she wants you."

The Doctor took the baby back with a pained look. He smoothed her white hair down with uncommon fussiness. "It's much worse than I thought," he told his companions, at last. "The people who kidnapped her have planted a device in her body. It appears to be a tracking beacon of some kind, but I've rarely seen this sort of design. It's barbaric and clearly meant for slavery."

"Why?" asked Adric. The boy's face was drawn as he looked at Peace and The Doctor.

"Because, if I try to remove this beacon from Peace's abdominal cavity, it will kill her instantly," The Doctor whispered. His eyes had darkened to a shade of blue more akin to a frozen lake than crystal. "The good news is that I can reverse the tracking signal and find the person responsible for this heinous crime. Of course, by default, the bad news is: I can find the person responsible." The Time Lord tucked the baby more snugly against his chest and straightened up. "And, for the person who did this to Peace, that is very, very bad news, indeed."


	5. Defiance In Retreat

**Author's Note: Serious chapter with some violence! Apparently, I am incapable of writing straight fluff. **

**And here's an audio of a bit of soundtrack from the incredible Eighth Doctor audio dramas from Big Finish Audio company entitled 'There's A Man I Know' watch?v=aae8JHpZV8M (seriously. listen to it. and buy some of the dramas)**

**Enjoy?**

5.

"My Lord Doctor," said the man on the bridge of the massive Iorian flagship, "we have waited on you for a much longer time than anticipated." The man stood taller than The Doctor, and his short, white hair and golden-brown skin marked him as some kind of species related to the Thionic race. He was dressed in a trim gray uniform with several shining golden symbols pinned to its front. Six other white-haired people were arranged around the bridge. All six looked relaxed but were obviously staged as backup for their leader.

Compared to the stark grey of their surroundings, The Doctor and his companions looked like exotic birds in a cage full of pigeons. Tegan and Adric flanked their Time Lord leader with bold stances. The Doctor himself stood as he usually did, in an unassuming pose which somehow still radiated power. His blue eyes shone in the fluorescent lighting of the spaceship. "What an interesting statement," The Doctor said, tightly. "I had no intention of meeting you, but clearly, you were waiting for me."

"Well, how else did a tracking beacon become implanted in a baby?" the man asked, amused. "It certainly didn't migrate there on its own."

The Doctor smiled humorlessly. "No, it didn't. That is my problem with you, actually. I can't find anything in common with a man who uses children as bait. As a matter of fact, I can't find anything good about you, either. So, please, enlighten me: Why did you take this child, and what did you hope to accomplish by doing this?"

"We needed to attract your attention," the man said. "I knew that there was a Time Lord in the next star system over through a data readout from one of our satellite scouting ships. And as for the child: one of them is easy enough to acquire, if you know the right sort of people. Babies without parents go missing every day on Thion. It's a way of life for us. I must say, using the child worked better and worse than I had hoped. I thought that you would neutralize the tracking device on your own. If you had done, it would have detonated into an electromagnetic pulse and left your ship stranded. We would have been able to board you, then."

"I would never kill a baby," said The Doctor, coldly. "Not under any circumstances."

"Is that so? Perhaps our records regarding the Time Lords are inaccurate. A species as advanced as your own seemed more in accord with our own values as a race. Once you discovered that the child was an orphan, I assumed you would remove it from its unfortunate circumstances."

"Time Lord superiority has never been my basis for moral decisions. Do not confuse social norms for personal codes of conduct."

"I never will again," the man said, with a smile. "It hardly matters. You're here, now, and the means are unimportant when there is such a satisfactory end."

Adric and Tegan both swelled up with indignation at these callous words, but before they could voice their displeasure, The Doctor held up a hand to stall them and walked slowly forward. "Oh, that's where you're terribly mistaken, I'm afraid. You see, I consider a man who would put an innocent person's life in danger purely for the sake of personal gain to be beneath my dignity to notice." He stopped walking when he stood before his newfound adversary, then tilted his face to look the man squarely in the eye. "If I had only my own wellbeing to consider, I would return to my capsule and dematerialize it out of this ship. But, because you alone have the technology to safely disable and remove the beacon from a _helpless child_ who you decided wasn't _important enough_ _to live_—" The Doctor cut himself off, taking a deep breath. "I will give you the privilege of keeping my attention for an entire half hour." Stepping back, the Time Lord folded his arms and tossed his head in a blatantly dismissive gesture. "Now, tell me why I'm here. Do be concise—I don't have all day."

The man's dark bronze lips twisted, but he answered. "Well, I'm not sure my previous offer will be appropriate. You are a very atypical Time Lord, aren't you?"

"I'd like to think so, yes."

"That does make things more hairy." The main put a hand to his chin. "I was going to offer you a Thionic crystal in exchange for a micro-tubule of your blood, but I don't think you'll be interested in such a deal."

"I'm afraid not," The Doctor said.

"Why do you want his blood?" Tegan asked, repulsed. "What's so special about it?"

"Any part of Time Lord DNA is worth a planet's weight in money and technological advances," Adric muttered. "I ran a statistic program on it, once. I was curious."

"You're right," the man said. "A single drop of Time Lord blood is enough to inspire researchers for decades."

"Or to keep you living on a king's salary for the rest of your life," Adric said, disdainfully.

"I think your information regarding Time Lords is about as accurate as that imitation Thionic military uniform you're wearing," The Doctor said, with a smirk. "Even if it wasn't prohibited by our laws, none of us are so foolish as to strike that kind of bargain."

The man straightened. "I am an officer of the Thionic Space Command—"

"It would be better for you if you stopped attempting to deceive me," The Doctor cut across the man's protest with words steelier than a blade. "Thionic planetary resources are incapable of producing gold. When they import it, it goes directly to their computer factories. They would never use it to make military dress. They wouldn't use brass, either, before you try to pull that trick, too. You're not a Thion, so you must be…" The Time Lord studied his opponent for a moment, then snapped his fingers, "Oh, of course! You're Churan, aren't you? A Churan, on an Iorian warship? Well, that narrows it down, doesn't it?"

The man smiled, then dropped a facetious bow. "Vach Undersoil at your service, My Lord Doctor."

"Are you?" The Doctor gave a sarcastic laugh. "Oh, wouldn't that be nice."

"Doctor," Tegan spoke, suddenly, "if they aren't military, then—"

"They're pirates, Tegan," The Doctor said, as if that wasn't bad news, at all, "interspatial pirates who pose as military officials and hoodwink unsuspecting space travelers. Churan pirates have been the bane of Thion, Chura, and Ortorsu for three hundred years."

"It truly is an honor to meet one of the esteemed Time Lords," said Vach Undersoil, with a deceptive smile, "even one who won't sign on to our deal."

"There is no deal, and there never was."

"You might want to reconsider, Lord Doctor."

The six pirates who had hung around their leader for the duration of his meeting with The Doctor closed in on Tegan and Adric. The Doctor's companions made to run, but they were overpowered by the pirates and forced to their knees on the floor of the bridge.

"All I need is a micro-tubule of blood," Vach said, calmly, as his crew members held The Doctor's friends ransom.

"Holding my friends hostage is no way to get it," The Doctor said, his eyes snapping with outrage.

"I won't lay a hand on them, if you'll give me what I need."

"Why don't you just shoot me and take every last drop of it?"

"Because killing a Time Lord is worth more than my life and my ship," Vach said, baring his teeth. "Your people would drop me in a time lock somewhere and leave me there. But, with just a tiny fraction of your blood, I can quadruple my net worth. But, of course, you know all this, Lord Doctor. I don't want to waste your time. So, make your decision: your crew, or my payment. The choice is entirely yours."

"Shoot us, then," Adric shouted, startling everyone on the bridge.

Tegan soon joined Adric. "Yes, shoot us! We'd rather die than let you make profit off The Doctor's body in any way!"

"I think they need more incentive," Vach said. He turned to one of his crew members. "Go to the landing dock. Get inside that ship and find the baby." He spun around to gauge The Doctor's reaction to this new development. When he was met with a stony expression, he laughed. "Maisenni is my very best shipmate, Lord Doctor. She will find a way inside your ship."

There was a tense silence as The Doctor and his companions waited, hoping that the pirates would not gain access to the TARDIS. In ordinary circumstances, The Doctor would not have worried about Nyssa and Peace at all; a stampede of Sontarans had tried and failed to break into the time-and-space machine. However, something about these Churan pirates unsettled The Doctor in a primal way. He felt a nagging feeling throughout his body, as though his very tissues were trying to send him a message. But, being a Time Lord, his mind could not categorize this biological imperative into any recognizable sensation. The disconnect between thought, emotion, and action was too overpowering.

"Whatever you do," The Doctor told Vach, "I will not cooperate."

Vach raised an eyebrow. "I'm quite an imaginative man, Lord Doctor."

"Yes, and to someone besides me, that might sound quite intimidating."

The unmistakable sounds of a shrieking baby echoed through the corridor outside the bridge of the ship. "Are you perhaps re-thinking your bravado, Lord Doctor?" Vach said, and then hit a button on the bridge's control center. "Bring them in, Maisenni."

Tegan and Adric cast one another tight glances. How could the pirates have broken into the TARDIS? Could they have such advanced technology? But, if they did, why did they seem to fear Time Lord powers? As they watched him, The Doctor's posture grew even more rigid. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Tegan knew that was a classic Doctor move to conceal either shaking hands or clenched fists, and either piece of body language was equally possible in this situation.

The pirate Maisenni and her crew stormed back onto the bridge. Nyssa walked amongst them, clutching Peace to her chest and looking terrified. "Doctor," she said, in relief, "you're all right! They told me they'd hurt you!"

"Nyssa, you shouldn't believe everything people tell you," The Doctor said. His voice was very flat.

"They had a recording of your voice which they manipulated," Nyssa explained. "I didn't realize it at the time, because I was in the TARDIS. I could only hear it, not see it."

"Are you a Time Lord, as well?" Vach asked Nyssa.

Nyssa glanced at The Doctor, who gave her a grave nod. "No," she said, but didn't elaborate on her true species.

"I see." Vach sighed. "Well, then, we have to work with what we've got. Take the child from her."

"No!" Adric and Tegan shouted. They struggled to leap to their feet, but the pirates held them down. The Doctor did not move to stop the pirates as they reached out to snatch Peace from Nyssa's arms. "Doctor, do something!" Tegan cried.

When the first pirate got within half a foot of Nyssa, he smacked against thin air as though he had hit a wall of bricks. He stumbled backward just as his comrades touched the same spot on which he had been standing. As one, they were all repelled in the same way, thrown backwards by an invisible force. Nyssa stood and watched her antagonists punch and prod the space around her until it rippled like a plastic bag full of water. "I came out of the TARDIS," the Trakenite girl said, her clear blue eyes sharp, "but I didn't come out unprotected. Considering the fact that I was travelling with The Doctor, you might have anticipated something like this."

The pirates stepped back and turned to their leader. "Very clever," Vach said, with a hand on his chin, "very, very clever, girl. It's some sort of cybernetic ectoplasm, I think, and most likely connected to the Time Lord capsule. It's virtually indestructible. Yes, you are very clear-headed, aren't you? But, you're not malicious, and that is where we've got you at a disadvantage." He snapped his fingers, and three of the pirates rushed over to seize The Doctor. One forced him to his knees and the other twisted his arm forcefully behind his back, nearly breaking it. The Doctor flinched but managed to stifle his automatic cry of pain behind gritted teeth. "We have no qualms about hurting any of your companions, Miss Nyssa," Vach said, then, to his subordinates, "break his ribs. Or, to prevent lasting damage, just his arm, for starters."

"No, don't!" Nyssa cried.

"Nyssa, don't listen to them," The Doctor said, strongly, even though the pirate behind him wrenched at his arm and forced him to bend backward to avoid a dislocated shoulder.

Vach shook his head. "We've got all the power, Miss Nyssa. It's best to listen to us and not My Lord Doctor."

"Leave him alone, you creep!" snarled Tegan. Vach ignored her as he stared at Nyssa's anguished face.

"All right," the pirate leader said, "since Nyssa's having difficulty deciding, we'll give her some incentive. Do it."

The pirate with a grip on The Doctor's arm put a foot on his back and casually shoved him to the floor, but his arm didn't travel with his body. There was a very definite crack as the Time Lord's elbow snapped out of joint. The Doctor appeared to nearly black out. Nyssa screamed in horror, along with Tegan and Adric. From within Nyssa's protective shield, Peace began to sob hysterically.

The Doctor wasn't giving in. "Nyssa," he said, breathing hard, "do not let down that shield for any reason. Do you understand—" he cut off with a gasp as the pirate twisted his mangled arm further, but then he continued, "—Nyssa, do you understand?"

"You have admirable strength, Lord Doctor," Vach said, "but if you don't stop talking, we'll make sure your young lady friend has even more motivation to change her mind."

"Why don't you just take what you want right now?" The Doctor asked. Sweat fell from his forehead as he tilted his face to stare at the pirate with defiant eyes. "I am in no position to stop you. You don't have to damage anyone else."

"I'm not a fool. Time Lords can control their neurochemicals and bodily substances to a freakish degree. I know that you could render a sample useless to our purposes just by concentrating hard enough. You must willingly give up that micro-tubule of blood, just as Miss Nyssa must willingly surrender the baby to us."

The Trakenite girl cradled the crying baby in her arms, her face full of indecision. A hundred debates rested in the furrows on her brow and around her eyes. Vach Undersoil's deceptively smooth voice cut into her thoughts. "Of course, we have no intention of hurting the baby, at all," the pirate said, "as long as Lord Doctor cooperates with us. We'll disengage the tracking device inside her, once we've concluded our business. You have my word."

"What good is the word of a man who would use a baby as leverage?" asked Nyssa, tremulously.

Vach shrugged. "Currently, it's the only one you've got."

Slowly, oh so slowly, Nyssa pulled a slim, silver oblong from her blouse. She placed her finger over it and depressed the button on its front. With a green shimmer, the protective shield around her and Peace dissolved.

"Nyssa," sighed The Doctor, and flinched as the pirate holding him tugged lightly on his arm.

"I'm so sorry, Doctor," Nyssa said, tearfully, "I've been so very stupid."

"Don't blame yourself, Nyssa," Tegan said. Her murderous glare in Vach Undersoil's direction made it abundantly clear who she did blame.

Peace wailed in terror when a pirate came forward and pulled her out of Nyssa's arms. In spite of the danger to herself and The Doctor, Nyssa reflexively tried to take the child back, but she was stopped by another pirate. "Don't hurt her, please," Nyssa cried, over the sound of Peace's confused fear. "She's just a baby!"

"Don't worry for your little friend's safety, Miss Nyssa," Vach said. "Lord Doctor will give us what we want, now." He looked at The Doctor, who appeared to be struggling to breathe normally through the crippling pain in his arm. "Won't you?"

"You certainly haven't left me with much of a choice, so I suppose I will," The Doctor gritted out.

"Excellent." The pirate captain motioned to one of his crew members, who hurried forward with a tiny tube and a capped needle. The Doctor's companions watched in sickened silence as the pirates pulled up the sleeve of The Doctor's shirt on his broken arm to take the blood sample. The Time Lord nearly passed out again when the pirate with the needle and tube grabbed his arm to steady it, then plunged the needle into his skin without warning or finesse.

"You're being unnecessarily cruel," Nyssa told Vach, her arms stiff at her sides.

Vach did not respond with anything but a careless glance. Peace continued to scream. As the crew member finished up the blood sample, the baby cried even louder. "Captain," the pirate holding the baby complained, "this little mouth's wearing out my ears."

The pirate captain waved a hand. "Kill the tracking beacon inside it and give it back to the guardians. They've paid the price for it, fairly and squarely." Vach stood over The Doctor and smiled down at him as he fought to stand with only one functional arm. "It was a true pleasure to do business with a Time Lord, My Lord Doctor. If you're ever in our system again, do look us up. We'd be happy to trade again."

The Doctor didn't respond in words, but the look he bestowed on Vach clearly stated that if he ever did meet the pirate again, Vach would regret it. The Time Lord's eyes followed the pirate who held the screaming Peace as he crossed to a machine on the far side of the Iorian ship's bridge. The baby writhed in the unkind grip and shrieked as the pirate placed the circular end of the small machine on her belly. As the machine whirred to life, Peace turned her face away from the pirate's chest and strained toward the spot in the room which The Doctor occupied. The Time Lord took deep, even breaths and relaxed his face and shoulders, wincing as his arm moved with the motion. Peace calmed immediately, her shrieks fading to dull whimpers.

"My, my," Vach Undersoil murmured, "someone has gotten attached, haven't they? It's a shame I didn't know that before, My Lord Doctor—I could have gotten even more leverage out of you."

The Doctor didn't answer. He waited with tight lips and stormy eyes while the pirate disabled Peace's tracking beacon. After several tense minutes, the pirate switched off the machine and carried the baby back toward her caretakers. Nyssa reached out to take Peace back, but the infant pulled away and let out a kitten-like mewl of protest. "Doctor," Nyssa whispered, her voice still thick with tears.

"I know." The Doctor walked haltingly over to the pirate and took Peace from him one-handed. He cradled her small body to his chest. "Let's go," he told his companions. Tegan, Adric, and Nyssa surrounded their Time Lord leader and herded him out of the room, casting vicious looks behind them. Vach Undersoil stood in the middle of the bridge and smiled like nothing in the universe could trouble him in his moment of victory.

When the crew reached the TARDIS, The Doctor passed Peace to Tegan, unlocked the doors, and strode into the console room with weary determination. "Adric, help me trigger a spatial stasis pocket around Undersoil's ship."

"Doctor, your arm—"

"Time is ticking, Adric! Help me, now!"

The Alzarian teenager hastened to obey, but he gave his female companions a worried look. Nyssa went to the console and helped The Doctor, as well. Together, the three scientific experts coaxed the ancient time-and-space-machine to do The Doctor's bidding.

"What's a spatial stasis pocket?" Tegan asked, as she rocked Peace back and forth.

"If we work fast enough, we can compress the space around Undersoil's ship and make it impossible for him to leave this particular area of space for up to four hours," The Doctor said. "The sheer amount of energy it would take to propel his ship through a part of space which is five times more dense than regular space will be astronomical, but it won't last forever. Eventually, his ship's engines will overcome the resistance of the compressed space and shoot the vessel into motion again. But, until that time, we'll have four hours to contact Gallifrey and direct the Council of Time Lords to deal with this pirate."

"I thought you didn't rely on your people for anything," Tegan said, surprised.

"Well—" The Doctor broke off, gasping, as the TARDIS tilted slightly and forced him to put out his broken arm to steady himself. "Given the circumstances," he continued, breathlessly, "I can't bring Undersoil to justice, myself, and he must be stopped from taking Time Lord DNA as a commodity."

"Not to mention, he's a terrible person, and someone should stop him from just doing whatever he likes," Nyssa exclaimed.

"You're quite right, Nyssa. And again, under the circumstances, the Time Lords are the best authorities to deal with this infringement of rights."

"Did the stasis work, Doctor?" Adric asked, as he flicked a series of switches on the console.

The Doctor gingerly lowered his broken arm back to his side and used his good arm to adjust a button on the control panel. "I just need to throw this last lever, and then we'll plot a course for Gallifrey."

There was silence in the control room aside from Peace's fussy noises and Tegan's soothing reassurance of, "Shhh, it's all right, little darling." The Doctor twisted a final knob and then sank quite calmly to the floor. Adric and Nyssa both gave cries of concern and knelt next to their older friend.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," The Doctor insisted, as Nyssa clutched at his good hand, "I just need to catch my breath. I've got to get Peace to the infirmary to verify that her tracking device is disabled."

"You need to go to the infirmary for yourself," Nyssa said. She helped The Doctor rise slowly.

"What, for this?" The Doctor twitched his broken arm, then grimaced. "No, it will heal soon enough. I just have to set it and immobilize it for a couple days, then it will be right as rain."

"Surely, you at least need a pain reliever?" Nyssa pressed.

"No, Nyssa, thank you, but I shall be perfectly fine."

"You're a terrible liar, Doctor," Tegan snorted. "Anyone can see you're in a lot of pain." Peace chose that moment to give a pitiful whine of distress, and the Australian woman patted her back gently. "There, there, sweetheart, The Doctor's going to be all right, as long as he isn't too stubborn for his own good."

The Doctor looked offended. "I think I'm old enough to know when I'm being purposefully obstinate, and this is not—" he paled and stumbled into Adric when Nyssa accidentally touched his broken arm as she helped him walk towards the back doorway.

"I'm sorry!" Nyssa looked horrified.

"What were you saying, Doctor?" Tegan asked, sweetly.

After Adric righted him, the Time Lord gave Tegan a mutinous look. "Give her to me," he said, and took Peace in his good arm. "I'll take some pain medication," he told the baby, "but just for you, to smooth out our telepathic exchange. It must be stressful to read my pain through our connection." Peace nuzzled contentedly against The Doctor's collar, sighing. The Doctor smiled. "Yes, I'm happy to see you, too, Peace."


	6. Thoughts of Gallifrey

6.

The Doctor followed Tegan's advice and took some pain medication. He ran more tests on Peace and declared the tracking device disabled. The pirates, although foul beings, had dealt as honestly with The Doctor as they had said they would. The TARDIS rushed on towards Gallifrey, and its inhabitants sat together in Nyssa's room as they waited for the time-and-space machine to land on The Doctor's home planet. Nyssa had set The Doctor's arm in a sling, but when she tried to take Peace from his good arm in order to relieve the Time Lord of some responsibility, the baby had kicked and struggled so ferociously that she had nearly rolled out of Nyssa's grip. "Oh, honestly, Peace," Nyssa said, in exasperation, "The Doctor needs to rest, and he can't do it if you're being so difficult!"

"I appreciate the thought behind the action, Nyssa," The Doctor said, "but it's really no great effort to hold her." He sighed a bit as Nyssa handed the baby back to him. "Honestly, it's more exhausting when I have to hear her telepathic panic for the entire time that she's away from me."

Adric studied The Doctor from his own position on the floor. The Time Lord's youthful appearance had taken on a careworn expression, but he still held Peace with a care that bordered on tenderness. The Doctor's eyes didn't hold their usual crystalline quality; the ordeal on the pirate ship and the pain killer's effects dulled their shine. His hair was ruffled. Adric was acutely aware of the many centuries The Doctor had lived. He wondered how many times The Doctor had witnessed and endured something as gut-clenching as the scene that had transpired on the Iorian ship.

"Look, Doctor," Adric said, hesitantly, "I've been thinking—"

"A dangerous pastime, Adric," The Doctor said, with a half-smile.

Adric was so intent on his thoughts that he didn't even roll his eyes. "Yes, but really, Doctor: what if we found Peace a home on Gallifrey?"

The Doctor sat completely straight against Nyssa's headboard. "On Gallifrey?" he repeated, blankly. In his arms, Peace hiccupped in a reflection of her caretaker's confusion.

"Why not?" Adric said. "Your people are telepathic, they're very advanced, they have more than enough resources to take in one orphan, and they don't send babies into cryosleep if they don't have parents. It seems almost ideal."

"Yes, Doctor," Nyssa said, sitting up, "why haven't we considered Gallifrey, before? Here we were, wondering where in the universe we could take her, and your own planet is a promising option!"

"I…" The Doctor stared down at Peace, who returned his gaze and burbled happily at him. "I don't know," he said, at length.

Adric frowned. "What don't you know?"

"I don't know if Gallifrey _is_ an option," The Doctor said. Because he lacked a second hand, he used his chin to move a clump of hair from Peace's eyes. The baby fluttered her eyelashes at the sensation, then sneezed delicately.

"Why?" Tegan asked. "From what Nyssa and Adric are saying, it sounds perfect!"

"Finding Peace a home isn't just about the resident species' neurological compatibility. It's about which culture would be best suited to her needs, and which society would be more likely to accept an orphan without any relatives."

"You kept talking about how similar Thionic babies were to Gallifreyan babies," Tegan pointed out. "Maybe no one will know she's not a native."

The Doctor's expression turned darker. "They would know."

Adric shook his head. "But, surely, with a race as enlightened as the Time Lords-"

"Is that what you think we are, Adric-enlightened?" The Doctor gave a short, derogative laugh. "Scientifically, we are unparalleled. Mathematically, we're the pinnacle of knowledge. Biologically, we're the brightest jewel in the crown of the universe. But, culturally, in so many ways, Adric, we're even less understanding than Thion."

"I don't understand," Adric said. The Alzarian teenager knew that he was inviting The Doctor to descend into one of his rants about the many faults of the Time Lords, but he felt that this time it was necessary.

The Doctor frowned down at the clump of hair which had once again fallen into Peace's face, then he gently blew air on the baby's forehead to remove it. Peace squealed with delight. "Let's imagine, for a moment, that we have decided to give Peace to a Time Lord House to raise. When we arrive and declare our intention to give a baby to a House, the Lord of House Affairs directs us to a list of possible adoptive Houses. Once we've reviewed the selection, we are then taken to a waiting area and are questioned: Where did this baby come from? Who were her parents? Is she of one genetic pattern? Does she have any genetic flaws? Is she genetically compatible with Gallifreyans, because she must be able to contribute to the gene pool if she belongs to a House. Is she telepathic? Is she fully telepathic? What is her IQ? What is her emotional stability? Is it possible that she is incapable of sensing time? Can she be trained to sense time like a normal Gallifreyan? And, if it happens we don't know the answer to even one of these many questions, Peace will be denied access to any House, and she will most likely be forced to leave the planet and never return."

"Cripes," Tegan said, "and I thought adoption on Earth was a pain."

Adric's face fell, but he persisted. "That doesn't mean we can't try, at least. If we can find a place for her on Gallifrey, you can keep an eye on her, Doctor. We'll know that she's all right."

Peace babbled something that sounded remarkably like, "Docka," and hiccupped again. The Doctor absentmindedly patted her on the back. "I'm telling you, Adric, it just isn't practical."

"Wait a minute," Tegan said, holding up a hand, "wait a minute, I'm on to something. You've got Peace's DNA readout, Doctor, because you scanned her the first day she came on board the TARDIS. You've got a record of her parents from the Thion Children's Bureau. You know what kind of telepath she is, because you've been stuck to her like glue for a month. You've got the answer to practically every question you just spat out!"

"I just made up those questions," The Doctor said, irritated. "I don't actually know what they'll ask. I just know that if we fail to answer even one inquiry, we'll have wasted hours of time with nothing to show for it."

"But, isn't it worth a try, like Adric said?" Tegan asked.

"No, it's not!" The Doctor's short retort made Peace flinch. The Time Lord looked immediately remorseful, and when Peace began to fuss, he spoke a few quick words to her in the strange, musical tongue that his three older companions recognized as his native language. Peace quieted in seconds. "Now, look what you've done," The Doctor told Adric, "you've got me speaking Gallifreyan to her!"

"Well, she seemed to like it," Tegan said, bemused.

"That's because it's slipped out a few times before, when she was particularly distressed." Inexplicably, this admission seemed to infuriate The Doctor further. "I shouldn't speak Gallifreyan to her," he said, darkly. "I'll permanently rearrange the language synapses in her brain. She'll grow up thinking she should be speaking Gallifreyan."

Tegan threw her hands in the air. "So, why don't we just take her to Gallifrey, for heaven's sake?"

"I already told you why we can't, Tegan!"

Something clicked in Adric's head. Suddenly, The Doctor's attitude made sense, because he himself had experienced a similar feeling not too long ago. He pulled himself off the floor and stared at the Time Lord. "I get it. You're jealous, aren't you?"

The Doctor's expression went flat. "What?"

"You don't want to leave Peace on Gallifrey because you'll be jealous of whoever gets to raise her. You'll be really close to her every time you come back to your home planet, but you won't be the one who gets to watch her grow up." Adric nodded as The Doctor looked away. "You'll be jealous of the House who gets her."

"No," The Doctor said, "that's ridiculous." But, as he said it, the hand supporting Peace stretched and pulled her just a little closer to his chest.

Tegan's eyes filled with compassion. "Oh, Doctor."

"Don't 'Oh, Doctor' me, Tegan."

"We're all going to miss her, Doctor. You don't have to be embarrassed."

"I just want what's best for Peace," The Doctor insisted.

"Then you'd take her to Gallifrey," Adric said. He tried to say it without sounding judgmental, but wasn't sure if he succeeded.

"And how would you know if that would be in her best interest, Adric?" The Doctor snapped. "You've never even been to Gallifrey. I've spent my whole life there."

"Because, it's obvious you're denying the facts that we set out in front of you!" Adric snapped back, exasperated. "Honestly, you're always forcing me to confront my uncharitable feelings, so I don't see why you can't do it too, for once!"

Before the two males could engage in further aggression, Nyssa burst out, "Oh, the solution to this whole dilemma is so obvious, isn't it? I'm astounded that neither of you has seen it, yet!"

"What is it, Nyssa?" The Doctor and Adric both cried, at the same time.

For once, Nyssa had to refrain from rolling _her_ eyes. "Look, Adric, do you remember what happened the first day that Peace arrived on the TARDIS? What mistake did I make?"

"You thought that Peace might be the product of—" Adric blushed, "procreation between The Doctor and Tegan."

"You what?!" The Doctor yelped. "Why would—when did—but that's—"

"My thoughts exactly," Tegan said dryly, and the two adults gave each other indignant looks.

"I think it was a valid if erroneous assumption," Nyssa said, primly. "And, if we play our cards correctly, the Time Lords will think so, too."

There was a beat of calculating silence which was broken only by Peace and her content cooing. Then, Adric said, "Are you saying…"

"It's a tidy solution to all of our problems," Nyssa said, "don't you think?" She couldn't help but look a tad smug.

Tegan grimaced, but she said, "If it'll help Peace, I'm up for it. I can make up a song and dance, Doctor, for her sake."

"You're all being very creative," The Doctor said, "but it's still not going to work. DNA scans will happen at some point. Peace is obviously not human or Time Lord or any mix of the two."

"Why do we have to tell them Tegan's human?" Nyssa asked, deceptively mild. She gave her companions an arched eyebrow. "They won't have to scan Tegan."

Everyone stared at her in blank astonishment. Then, Adric's lips curled up. He walked on his knees to where Nyssa sat and slung an arm around her. "Nyssa, you are the most brilliant woman I've ever met!"

"I'll try to ignore the gender qualifier and accept your compliment." The Trakenite woman grinned. "But, it is a pretty good idea, isn't it?"

Tegan was not so celebratory. She noticed The Doctor's notable silence and went to sit next to him on Nyssa's bed. "Will it work?" she asked him, quietly.

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't know."

"You're really upset about this, Doctor, and I don't know why."

"I don't either." The Doctor put his head on the wall and watched the ceiling as though it was genuinely interesting. Peace hummed deep in her throat and stretched pleasantly. "It's just—" The Doctor stopped his sentence before it started, then, seemingly against his will, he spoke, "It's just that I've given Gallifrey my children, already, and they've given their own children. I contributed to the Time Lord expectations of furthering the species."

"Well, that's certainly a romantic way of putting it," Tegan said, dryly.

"That was more of a profession of love for my family than you'd get from most Time Lords if you asked them to talk about their own children," The Doctor said. "Do you understand why I wouldn't want to send Peace there, Tegan? We're not emotional. We're not sentimental. We're not a forgiving society: children who are not full-blooded Time Lords are pariahs. They're accepted, grudgingly, if their House has enough influence to send them to Academy regardless of their questionable lineage, but don't ever expect anyone to respect them. Their professors will find some way to give them failing marks, and within a decade, they're expelled. There is very little future for someone like Peace on Gallifrey." This last bit of speech was delivered softly, as The Doctor returned his gaze to the tiny person resting so trustingly against him. "Just look at her," the Time Lord murmured. "If you could feel her mind the way I feel it, Tegan, you would know that a spirit like this child has would be crushed on Gallifrey."

Sometime during The Doctor's words, Nyssa and Adric had paid attention to the conversation between their older counterparts and had moved to sit with them on the bed. Now, they looked at Peace and saw the innocence in her tiny, wiggling body and the happiness in her deep, blue eyes. They could see what The Doctor saw every time he looked at her. "She's just so helpless," Adric said, almost reverently, "and she's—she's just so sweet, isn't she?"

"She reminds me of home," Nyssa said, to her companions' surprise. Nyssa rarely talked about Traken in such a casual setting. "Before the evil of The Master, everything was so clean. The air itself was pure. When I look at Peace, I know that she's never had evil in her heart." The Trakenite girl's mouth firmed up. "I've been silly, Doctor. This past month, I've made one mistake after another. I'm not going to make another one. If you think we should find another planet for Peace, then that's what we'll do."

Nyssa prodded Adric, and he whined, "What?" Nyssa widened her eyes significantly. "Oh, all right," he sighed, "I agree with Nyssa, Doctor: you do what you think is best. We'll just have to save the plan for later, on the next potential planet."

Tegan smiled at the two teenagers. "How very sensible of you both."

"Well," The Doctor said, haughtily, "finally, you listen to reason! I thought I was—wait a minute, what do you mean, _save the plan for later_? I am _not_ claiming that Tegan is the mother of my child on _any_ world, do you hear me?"


	7. Closer to the End

**Author's Note: Well, this "little" project is actually over 70 pages long. But this is the second to last upload! I hope you're still hanging in there with me!**

**More Notes on Classic Who: This interpretation of Gallifreyan social mores is entirely my own. Vistra is an OC and may not be consistent with TV Gallifreyans, but I think she is, based on dialogue and unspoken assumptions of characters on screen. Anyway...**

**Enjoy!**

7.

The Doctor had come to her with many peculiar accoutrements, Lady Vistra thought, but these current accessories were definitely some of the strangest. She was the Temporal Corrections Officer of Central Gallifrey, for the time being, so it made perfect sense why he would seek her out to deal with a matter of stolen Time Lord DNA. What she couldn't understand was why he had arrived in his funny blue TARDIS with his arm in a sling and with a baby strapped to his chest. She didn't understand, but she aimed to find out.

"You do realize that once we've ironed the details of this matter out, you'll have to fill out the proper forms?" asked Vistra. She thought she'd start the conversation slowly, in the hopes that this most evasive of Time Lords wouldn't startle at her prying questions.

The Doctor looked as thrilled as ever about having to do the real work of time and space regulation. "Yes, Officer, I understand that."

"Given your history, Doctor, we must always wonder."

"I've always done the paperwork," the blonde Time Lord said, annoyed. When Vistra gave him an arch look, he relented. "Most of the time."

"When it doesn't inconvenience you terribly, you deign to comply," Vistra said. "Of course, I don't know what else I should expect from you, Doctor."

"Are you just going to prod at me all day, or are you going to release an agent to resolve this fiasco?"

Vistra turned her eye skyward, looking for patience. Nothing more helpful than a section of the Citadel's clear protective dome greeted her. "You said this pirate was working around Thion space?"

"He was a Churan pirate, Officer. They don't stray much farther than the Tia Doma Nebula. There's too much profit to be had from Thion and its sister planets."

"Yes, thank you," Vistra said, testily. She was quite familiar with the habits of Churan pirates. She had been around the universe a time or two, something which The Doctor often forgot. "And I assume that your injury is the reason you have not taken the appropriate measures of arrest?"

The Doctor looked distinctly uncomfortable, which made Vistra a tad more happy. The baby at his chest gurgled. "Well, that is part of the reason, yes."

"Can you even fly a TARDIS with a broken arm, Doctor?"

"It's difficult, but, yes, I seem to have managed." The Doctor coughed.

"You managed it all by yourself, did you?" asked Vistra, tongue-in-cheek. There were many rumors about what and who The Doctor allowed inside his time-and-space-machine. Vistra could only imagine what lifeforms were hidden away inside the small blue box. Whatever they were, The Doctor had undoubtedly broken multiple planetary laws by bringing them to Gallifrey.

"Not really any of your business, is it, Officer Vistra?" The Doctor responded, equally arch. "Rest assured, I arrived without any complications. And there will be no complications having to do with my TARDIS. You have my word."

The tiny creature at The Doctor's chest wobbled its head back and forth and babbled. Vistra was privately amused to think that there was a sizable swatch of drool on The Doctor's fine cream jumper. "One more question, Doctor: where in heaven's name did you acquire an infant?" The Doctor nervously laid a hand on the small person's back, and Vistra caught the trace of a bright, tickling consciousness at the edges of her perception. "And a telepathic infant, at that," Vistra added, intrigued.

"The Pars System," The Doctor said, without further elaboration.

Since he was putting her to immense trouble with his egregious breach of Time Lord protocol regarding the Churan pirate, Vistra couldn't resist a few more digs. "This isn't another indiscretion of yours, is it, Doctor?"

"Excuse me," The Doctor said, coldly, "that is going too far."

Vistra casually sorted through the paperwork on her portable organizer. "It would explain the telepathy, wouldn't it?" She was being horribly rude, but she knew that The Doctor would never mention this conversation to anyone. He was not nearly as free-spirited as he pretended to be. His sensibilities were decidedly Time Lord. "Plus," Vistra smiled, "I've heard you do have such a fondness for less evolved beings."

The baby's head bobbed. Its arms and legs shifted where they hung freely from the strange suspension device strapped to The Doctor's chest. The Doctor himself seemed frozen to the spot with indignation. Vistra congratulated herself on riling him up so effectively. Given his usual manic need for motion, a Time Lord like The Doctor was at his most emotional when he didn't move at all. "How dare you," The Doctor said.

Vistra caught the ice in his tone, and wondered if she had gone a little too far, but she shrugged it off. It was too late to back down. "Well, you're not denying it, are you?"

"There's nothing to deny." The Doctor's blue eyes snapped. Vistra had heard many stories about The Doctor's fiery gaze. She could now safely say that she could contribute to the stories and verify their truth. Oh, how the young Academy students would swoon over this bit of data collection. For some reason, the younger crowd practically worshipped the errant Time Lord.

"It does look so much like you," Vistra said, nodding to the baby.

"Do you think?" The Doctor smiled blandly. "How perfectly ignorant of you to say so."

"Well, it's fortunate to resemble you, otherwise you would never sneak it into a House. I doubt even your own would take it." It had suddenly occurred to Vistra that the only reason a Time Lord would carry an infant through Gallifrey would be to use the infant to further the population of one House or another. Otherwise, The Doctor could have simply left the baby on the TARDIS with whatever lower being was undoubtedly the creature's mother.

The blonde Time Lord didn't lash out with his legendary burning anger. Instead, his face closed off entirely, as though someone had flicked a switch in his mind. He turned away from Vistra and walked to the Observatory door. "_Her_ name is Peace," The Doctor said. "And, now that I've delivered my report, we're leaving. Thank you, Officer Vistra, for the inestimable pleasure of your company. You were as polite and accommodating as always." The clear glass panels of the door parted.

"You're quite welcome, Doctor," Vistra said. "I will make sure the pirate is apprehended. We can't have yet _more_ of your DNA floating about the universe, after all."

The innuendo was not lost on her departing guest. He paused, turned, and said, "What you've implied is completely untrue, as I have stated numerous times to any half-witted fool on this planet who will listen. But, if it was true, Officer Vistra, whichever _less evolved being_ that consented to assist in procreation with me-in whatever method possible-would be infinitely preferable to doing any sort of genetic tango with you." The Doctor tipped his hat and stalked off.

Vistra had the impression that she had just been gravely insulted.

Peace had seemed to recover completely from the trauma of the pirate incident. She remained on the TARDIS for another week while The Doctor and his companions put their combined efforts into the search for the perfect adoptive planet for her. During that time, she made leaps in her development: when The Doctor placed her on a blanket in the middle of the console room, she would roll over onto her back and squeal until he righted her again; she started eating a very pasty form of cereal Adric had devised in the lab; and she became even more vocal with her babble and screams. Her guardians were dumbstruck and absurdly proud.

"I mean, it is a bit ridiculous how we're so thrilled about this," Adric commented, as they all watched Peace clumsily roll over. "We're not even her biological parents."

"You'd be her brother, not her dad, anyway," Tegan said, laughing.

Adric blushed. "I'll have you know, on this one planet The Doctor and I visited—"

"Oh, let's not talk about that planet, Adric," The Doctor said, hastily.

"It is a bit strange," Nyssa mused. "I feel so invested in Peace's accomplishments."

"There's nothing strange about it," Tegan said, in the high-pitched, sprightly voice she often used for Peace. "We've been her surrogate family for weeks now—come on, Peace! Roll over! Oh, what a clever doll!—so we're bound to be glad when she starts growing up."

Peace waved her limbs in the air and crowed. The Doctor sat back and raised an eyebrow. "You're going to have to learn to roll yourself back over, too, Peace."

The baby fixed her wide blue eyes on her Time Lord surrogate. After a moment of motionless staring, she broke into an infantile smile and squealed loudly. She strained toward where the The Doctor sat on the floor next to her blanket, but her supine position stopped her from wiggling to him. A crease appeared between the baby's eyebrows. Her tongue poked between her lips.

"Oh, dear," Nyssa said, "she doesn't look pleased with us."

"She'll be fine," The Doctor said, calmly.

Peace pulled her arms out in front of her and moved them up and down. When that maneuver didn't work, she rocked from side to side, but she didn't use enough force. She protested her immobility loudly for a second, and then she went back to rocking. Finally, she tipped over onto one side and nearly smothered herself in the blanket before she lifted her head. Blinking in bewilderment, the baby turned her eyes back to her original target: the Time Lord at the other side of the blanket. With a shriek, Peace inch-wormed along the floor until she flopped down right in front of The Doctor.

"Hooray, Peace!" cried Tegan, in her loud, Earth manner.

"That was amazing!" Adric said. "She has great problem-solving skills!"

"Babies are so determined, aren't they?" Nyssa said, beaming. "Or, at least, Peace is!"

Peace was still babbling away, so The Doctor picked her up and briefly rested her forehead against his own, congratulating her on her accomplishment telepathically rather than verbally. He went to put her down on the blanket, but she curled up her legs and swatted wildly at his face. Her uncoordinated movement still sent him the clear telepathic message: Peace did not want to be put down. She wanted The Doctor to hold her for a little bit longer.

"Oh, all right," The Doctor sighed. His arm had only needed two days in the sling before it had healed. He could now cradle Peace with both arms. "But after this, you're going back on the blanket," the Time Lord told his tiny charge. "I have to adjust the settings on the temporal stabilizer, and that's simply not a one-handed job."

Peace buried her face in his neck and snuffled heartily. Through the skin-to-skin contact, The Doctor could feel the image of himself in Peace's mind for the first time. The baby couldn't yet form complete sentences, but the impressions of words and ideas were enough to paint a picture: _warm, safe, never far away. _There was a sensation rather like being wrapped in a soft, warm blanket, and The Doctor could hear his own voice distorted through Peace's ears. The sound of his voice brought more impressions that were very similar to the first three. But the gentle wash of affection and dependence woven throughout all the ideas and feelings is what touched The Doctor's mind most profoundly. Peace rolled her head and the contact was broken. The Doctor stared down at her in shock.

"Is there something the matter, Doctor?" asked Nyssa, curiously.

"Her muscle coordination isn't the only thing that's developing," The Doctor responded, faintly. Peace hiccupped at him.

For once, Tegan seemed oblivious to the emotional undercurrents of the situation. "Here, I'll take her," the human woman said, and plucked Peace from his arms. "You need to work on the TARDIS."

"Right," The Doctor said, nodding shallowly, "right, right, right…"

He stood and went to the console, and his three older companions gave one another puzzled looks. "We totally missed something," Adric muttered, under his breath, "didn't we?"


	8. Youana

**Author's Note: Final Chapter. After this, there is an epilogue. :) I hope you've had a pleasant read! I always hope someone will be tickled by my fics, fluff or otherwise. **

**Here's a song for this marshmallow fic: watch?v=RgFWkKaZPhY 'Lullaby' by Josh Groban and Ladysmith Black Mambazo**

**Enjoy?**

8.

The planet was tropics on one side and tundra on the other, the climatic division much more apparent than on Earth. There was plenty of water on either hemisphere, plenty of prosperous cities, and plenty of uncharted territory. The people of the planet were all high-level telepaths and had governed themselves in independent factions for many years without major civil or military unrest. Their attitude toward children was very positive, and adoption was considered a great honor. Interplanetary adoption had only become possible for the inhabitants of the planet in the last decade, but many people had chosen to add alien children to their families.

"In other words," The Doctor announced to his crew, "this planet is perfect for Peace."

"The vital statistics certainly look promising," Nyssa said, as she viewed the information pulled up on the TARDIS data screens. "And the social indicators are very positive. I think this could be the one."

"There's a city-state here that gives adopted aliens full legal rights," Adric said, in wonder. "That's practically unheard of, considering all the other options we rejected!"

"All I want to know is if she's going to be happy," Tegan said. She currently held Peace while feeding her a bottle of Adric's formula.

"Well, no statistics can tell us that," The Doctor sighed. "We'll just have to hope for the best."

Nyssa straightened from the monitor. "I think it's the best option we're going to get."

"Oh, undoubtedly." The Doctor leaned against the console and stared into space. "The coordinates are not difficult at all," the Time Lord said, to himself. "I could have us there in a matter of minutes."

"Minutes?" Tegan repeated, and instinctively cuddled Peace closer. "Hold on a minute, Doctor! It's been so long, surely a couple more days won't hurt anything?"

"Actually, they could," The Doctor said. "Watch." He stood and walked out of the doors leading into the rest of the TARDIS. His companions waited for several minutes, wondering what they were supposed to see. After fifteen minutes, Peace stirred fitfully in Tegan's arms. The baby pushed away her bottle and let out a healthy wail. Her cries grew louder as the minutes wore on without an appearance from The Doctor.

At length, Tegan yelled, "All right, you've made your point, Doctor! Please come back, would you?"

A door opened unexpectedly behind the three older companions, and The Doctor emerged. "There, you see. We've got to give her to her adoptive parents as soon as possible." He didn't sound smug or amused, as he usually did when he proved a point. Instead, he shut the door behind him and approached his friends quietly, with a pensive look on his face. Peace fussed until Tegan handed her to The Doctor. As soon as she felt his double heartbeats against her body, the baby stopped crying.

"This is going to be a lot harder than I thought," Tegan admitted.

"It's got to be done, though, hasn't it?" The Doctor said, his voice carefully neutral. "Peace needs to be with her new caretakers before she becomes too hard-wired to Nyssa and me as her primary telepathic contacts. The sooner we take her to Youana, the better."

"All right, all right!" Tegan took a deep breath. "How about one day? We can all say goodbye, properly, and then we'll take her there."

"That seems fair, Doctor," Adric said, hesitantly.

"I like that plan," Nyssa said, without equivocation. "I'll try to taper my own telepathic connection over the span of a day, although I'm not sure how."

"You can't," The Doctor said, grimly. "It's going to be all or nothing, Nyssa. We can't avoid it. Peace's connection to us will be snapped as soon as we leave the planet."

"What, like that form of punishment you told us about, that they use on Gallifrey? Yanking the rug out from under her?" said Tegan, in horror. "No, Doctor! That's cruel!"

"Now you see why I say we should do this sooner rather than later!"

"There's nothing we can do?" Adric asked, weakly.

"Nothing." The Doctor looked down at the baby in his arms. "I did try to warn you lot," he said. His face softened as Peace grabbed hold of his lapels. "We should never have let her get so attached to—to us."

"To you, is what you mean to say," Tegan said, sounding near tears, already. "And we should have listened. It's going to kill me to do this to her, Doctor."

"Well, think how I feel," the Time Lord answered, sharply. "At least you won't have to feel it inside your head, her panic and fear—" he cut himself off. "It doesn't matter; she'll have a new family. She'll recover."

With those words, The Doctor swept off into the TARDIS, taking Peace with him. No one tried to follow him or asked where he was going. For once, all three companions agreed that their leader needed his space. Adric slumped against the console while Nyssa and Tegan gave one another a tight hug.

"It'll be all right, Tegan," Nyssa said, quietly, without her usual confidence. "It will all work out."

All too soon, twenty-four hours had passed inside the TARDIS and on the planet below it. Youana entered another morning. The TARDIS crew gathered in the console, dressed in the clothes they had worn the day before. None of them had slept. Tegan had a cup of coffee clutched in her hand as though it was a talisman to ward off evil. Adric had a satchel over his shoulder which was stuffed to the brim with bottles of his baby formula and the piece of paper on which he'd written his original findings. Nyssa had nothing in her hands but a scanner's data chip which contained Peace's DNA readouts and all the information on Thionic physiology she had found in the TARDIS computers.

The Doctor held Peace gently in his hands. He tilted her from side to side, cataloguing her appearance. For her part, the baby stayed trustingly still, only moving to tilt her head back at The Doctor. She was clearly studying him, too. Although Peace didn't understand exactly what was happening, she could feel the change in her Time Lord's telepathic signals. She was not distressed—not yet. The Doctor dreaded the moment when she would read his own distress and project it through her own emotions.

"Let me hold her," Tegan said, "just one last time." The Earth woman had taken the imminent separation much harder than she had expected. She was not a baby aficionado. She had no children of her own, and none of her close relatives had infants. However, being in such close proximity to a baby for such a long time had inevitably drawn her to Peace. She couldn't hold back the wrenching sense of loss she felt sweep through her as she held Peace in her arms for the last time. The baby felt Tegan's drop in calm and made a noise of discontent. "Oh, Lord," Tegan said, thickly, "I'm going to be a total ninny and cry, and it's going to upset you terribly, Peace." Tears dripped slowly down her face as she kissed Peace on the cheek and cuddled her tightly. "Goodbye, sweetheart. I hope you have the best life in the whole universe. I hope you get the job you always wanted, and you get to travel—" she swallowed, "and that you find whatever kind of love happens on this planet. I hope you find it all, Peace."

Before she could totally lose her composure, Tegan stiffly handed Peace over to Adric. The Alzarian fumbled with her for the first time in a long time until he could settle her in the crook of his arm. "Um," Adric said, still unnerved by Tegan's very Earthly display of emotion, "um, well, I hope all those good things happen to you, too, Peace. I mean, if you don't want to travel or get married—or whatever—that's perfectly all right. Just make sure you're productive and you're polite to everyone and—and—" the teenager found himself getting mired down by his feelings, too. "And you only remember us if it's going to be a nice thing, and it's not going to make you sad." He patted Peace on the back when the baby squeaked and passed her to Nyssa.

"Oh, no, I don't know what to say." Nyssa's eyes looked suspiciously red and glassy. "Do I have to say anything?" she asked her companions, somewhat desperately.

"No, no," Tegan assured her tearfully, "whatever you want to do is fine, Nyssa."

"I only did it because Tegan did," Adric hastened to add. "I thought it was a bit silly, really—yes, silly, th-that's it!" Tegan laughed in a watery voice.

Nyssa nodded mutely and pressed her forehead to the baby's face. She focused on her breathing, keeping her body's reactions under a tight rein. She wanted to keep Peace as happy as she could before they had to wrench all security from her little life. She knew The Doctor would try, as well, but also knew that his telepathic connection to Peace was stronger and would be affected more deeply by their parting. "Kindness will keep you, if you keep kindness," Nyssa said, whispering to Peace. The TARDIS would translate the phrase so her companions would understand, but she had spoken in her own language. She wanted to say goodbye to Peace in the manner that Trakenites had blessed their children for generations. With a final breath, Nyssa turned to The Doctor. "We're all as ready as we can be, Doctor."

"As ready as we'll ever be, you mean," Tegan said.

The Doctor didn't respond. He simply took Peace from Nyssa and reached over to trip the lever which opened the TARDIS doors. Nyssa's efforts to stay calm had brought Peace back to a tranquil state, and the baby giggled and flailed wildly in The Doctor's arms as he walked out of the time-and-space machine like a man going to war. Nyssa wondered if it hadn't been more cruel to reassure Peace when she was minutes away from being left alone on a strange planet with strange people.

"Isn't The Doctor going to say goodbye?" Adric hissed, to his female friends.

"Shhh," Tegan said, swatting Adric's arm.

"I just wanted to know," Adric muttered.

"Where are we?" Nyssa asked.

It took The Doctor far longer than usual to answer. "We're just outside the city-state of Leeara, on Youana's tropical hemisphere. Based on Thionic climates, I thought a warm part of the planet would be best. Plus, as Adric pointed out, this is the city-state where an adopted alien will have full citizenship and citizen rights."

Leeara was a grand metropolis, built high with grandeur and teeming with lifeforms. The balmy weather was intensified by the immensely tall metal buildings shooting up from the ground. The sky was filled with aircraft of every kind, and the streets were packed to bursting with people. No one noticed The Doctor and his humanoid companions as they traveled through the crowds.

Peace's mind was filled with wonder at the change in scenery. The Doctor could feel her blank astonishment as she watched the buildings, vehicles, and pedestrians. She kicked her short legs and let out infantile shouts of disbelief. The Time Lord held her closer to his chest. _Home, _The Doctor thought, fiercely, and did his best with his limited understanding of the term to paint a picture in Peace's telepathic landscapes. He had never felt much at home on Gallifrey, but he would try to make it enough to encourage the baby. _Home for Peace. _

The four older companions walked for several minutes, until they reached the spot The Doctor had found the night before on the TARDIS monitors. The area was open, small in the enormous city, but not small enough to be overlooked. There was a smooth square of shining grey metal all around a raised platform. The platform itself was barely one meter by half a meter, and on it rested an even smaller pod. On the platform, there was a plaque which the TARDIS translated: IF UNABLE TO CARE FOR BABY, PLACE HERE FOR GOOD HOME. The message was straightforward and easy to read.

"We're leaving her in a clamshell?" Tegan said, her voice rising.

"It's the only way," The Doctor said. "If we went through the regular channels, we'd have to wait for nearly three years."

"Doctor, we have a time machine! We could skip three years!"

"Oh, yes? And how would we explain the fact that Peace hasn't grown an inch in all that time? Here on Youana, a child is monitored and the adoptive parents have full access to them, but the wait time for official adoption is three years." The Doctor smiled thinly. "Paperwork is the same the universe over."

"Is it safe?" Nyssa asked.

"Of course. Once there's a baby inside it, an alarm will sound at the Youana Children's Protection Agency, and an agent will be sent out immediately to retrieve him or her. They could be with an adopted family within two days."

Nyssa was not convinced. "How can that be, if it takes so long to go through the proper channels?"

The Doctor sighed and adjusted Peace as she nearly rolled out of his arms. "Because any baby placed here is considered an emergency case, especially if they're telepathic. Therefore, they're expedited to an emergency adoption. Many prominent families on Youana have standing adoption status. They have applied to receive the first emergency child that is detected in their sector."

"That's very clever," Adric admitted, somewhat glumly.

"They're brilliant, the Youanai." The Doctor looked up at the adoption pod. "It's time."

"We've already said goodbye," Tegan said, and pushed lightly at his back. "You go on and get her settled, Doctor. We'll wait here."

"And take my bag of formula," Adric said. He slung the heavy cloth bag onto The Doctor's shoulder. The Doctor staggered slightly.

"Oh, yes," Nyssa said, "and her genetic readouts!" She stuffed the scanner data bank in the bag on top of the formula bottled.

"All right, yes, thank you," The Doctor said, swinging the bag to a more comfortable position. With the unbalanced weight on one side, he walked carefully toward the pod's platform.

The Doctor, knowing what would follow an abrupt telepathic disconnection, did not particularly want to be alone. But on the other hand, he wanted to be free to say goodbye to Peace in his own way, without observers. He tucked the baby under his chin and marched onto the metal square. Peace rubbed her head affectionately against his jaw. The Doctor felt a tickle from her hair and a bit of wetness from her lips. He smiled in spite of the circumstances.

When he stood before the pod, the Time Lord gave the baby a kiss on the top of her platinum-haired head. Peace cooed and a wave of sweet, uncomplicated love flowed from her mind into the mind of her caretaker. "Well," The Doctor said, nearly silently, "here we are, Peace. And here is where we were always meant to be. I can feel it: your timelines coalescing, wrapping around this spot. They're mostly pleasant. Some are sad, and some are dreary, but how would we ever learn to appreciate the pleasant times without the sad or dreary times? No, I wouldn't change anything about your future, my dear." Peace blew air through her lips, and The Doctor gave a very suspicious hiccup. "Well, the only thing I would change is the absence of me, Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan." He smoothed the cloth on Peace's back and shook his head. "But, I won't change it, Peace. I won't take that chance with your lifetime. I'll leave things well enough alone, for once."

Resting two fingers on Peace's cheek, The Doctor stilled his own plummeting emotions and tried to send his tiny charge into a light sleep. Peace wouldn't cooperate. She mumbled nonsense and swung her fist to dislodge her caretaker's fingers. After a second and third try, The Doctor gave up. He whispered a farewell, the last Gallifreyan word Peace would ever hear, and lowered her into the waiting pod. Even when he drew his hands away and pressed the button to close the lid, Peace did not realize The Doctor's intent.

The Doctor made it thirteen steps before he felt it: the panic that gradually crept into Peace's mind. He kept walking. He made it to his waiting companions before he felt Peace's mental alarm change to outright hysteria. The image of his own person in Peace's mind swept over him, tinged with an edge of questioning disbelief. _Home, _The Doctor thought, forcefully, _home for Peace. _The answering confusion and denial from the baby was a physical pain in the Time Lord's chest.

_Not wanted,_ Peace's thoughts screamed, paired with a demand for The Doctor's voice, hands, and heartbeats.

The Doctor stumbled slightly as Peace's telepathic panic turned to agony. _Home. Home for Peace, _The Doctor repeated.

_No! _Peace couldn't articulate the word in her mind, but her caretaker felt it, nonetheless.

He managed to keep his thoughts steady, but failed at controlling his body. When the sharp sensation of abandonment cut through Peace's thoughts, The Doctor felt tears spill down his cheeks. The sensation hurt him, not only mentally, but physically.

When he reached his companions, they all reached out to steady him. "Doctor," Nyssa said, shocked at the tears on the Time Lord's face, "what's the matter? Are you in pain?"

The Doctor nodded, still focused on the mental bridge between himself and the baby in the pod. His telepathic connection to Peace had hard-wired him as well as Peace. As her primary caregiver, he had established a bond which was biologically difficult to break for the sake of the child. Biologically, he was supposed to stay with Peace—he was compelled to stay with Peace. Walking away from her when she was in obvious distress was like walking through a live current of electricity.

"Take me back to the TARDIS," The Doctor gasped.

His companions shared an uncertain look. "But—" Tegan tried to say.

"Please, do it now!" The Doctor seized Tegan's arm. "The telepathy—if I don't go now, I'm going to take her back. Her thoughts—she's abandoned—it's _killing_ me—"

"We'll get you to the TARDIS," Nyssa said, taking The Doctor's hand. Tears were falling from her eyes, as well. She experienced the same telepathic feedback as The Doctor, but her connection to Peace was much less intimate. The pain was only as severe as a bad headache for her.

Peace continued to cry out in mental anguish, torturing The Doctor all the way back to the TARDIS. The Time Lord's companions tactfully ignored his completely reflexive, involuntary weeping and kept him hemmed in by a wall of supportive bodies. Through the whole ordeal, The Doctor kept thinking, steadfastly, _Home. Home for Peace. _But Peace would not be soothed.

Her final thoughts before the TARDIS doors insulated him from her mind nearly made The Doctor's knees give out. _No! Father, don't go!_

"Adric, help me," snapped Nyssa, as she programmed the TARDIS to return to the space around Youana. Silently, Adric complied.

Tegan stood to the side of the console and held The Doctor in an uncharacteristically sensitive hug. "You did the right thing, Doctor," the Earth woman told him, over his efforts to control himself. "She's going to have a family, and they're going to love her so much. Oh, cripes, I had no idea it was going to hurt you this badly—Oh, it's going to be all right, Doctor—"

"I know," The Doctor gasped, "I know—it's just—hard to break the connection—without side effects—I'll be fine in a moment-"

"For once in your life, just hush," Tegan said, but without any heat in her voice. "Nyssa and Adric have got the TARDIS under control. Let me take you to the kitchen for a cup of tea and some scones."

And, for once in his life, The Doctor listened to Tegan Jovanka.


	9. Epilogue: To the Stars

**Author's Note: This is really the end, now! Thanks for reading and/or reviewing and/or favoriting! Or, if you didn't, well, that's all right...I guess...**

**A song for this final chapter: 'We'll Meet Again' by Vera Lynn (a good old-fashioned song) watch?v=CqA5IJPEONY**

**Enjoy! :)**

Epilogue: To the Stars

The day dawned bright and beautiful on the tropical hemisphere of Youana. The people of the city-state of Leeara went about their usual morning business. Sky vehicles whizzed overhead and ground cars stood in nearly motionless lines as they waited for traffic to abate. Pedestrians milled in two directions on each street, their chatter a pleasant counterpoint to the rush of transportation above and beside them. The buildings gleamed brilliantly in the light of the sun, and the air carried the cloak of humidity which never truly faded on this side of the di-climatic planet.

Many Youanai hurried past the Leeara City-State Center of Interplanetary Affairs without one glance at the large crowd gathered at its steps. The gathered people were a conglomeration of reporters, activists, and interested citizens, and they all pressed closer toward the small group standing at the top of the steps. The reporters forced their way to the most advantageous positions and captured the images of the four people on the steps with their recording devices.

One specially designated member of the press held a sound amplifier to the mouth of the tall, elderly man who stood at the forefront of the small but important group. The older Youanai cleared his throat and spoke loudly through the amplifier. "People of Leeara, our great and bountiful city-state, this is a day which should be remembered for many turnings of the planet. I see that the crowd gathered here is not as substantial as we would have liked, but let's not be discouraged! Progress has been made, today! For today, we are to welcome the very first Star-born among us to take her place as a Youanai Diplomat!" There was a great amount of applause from the regular citizens standing around the steps. "Please, greet your new Diplomat with the honor and praise she deserves. Diplomat Choshana Vugarti, please take your place among the dignitaries of Leeara!"

The crowd reacted with further applause and shouts of approval as a short, willowy woman stepped forward and took the elderly man's place. She was adorned with robes of deep blue that shimmered with thousands of reflective spots, representing the stars with which she would intercede on Leeara's behalf. The robes covered her slender body to her ankles. Her hair shone almost-white in the sun. Her eyes, a shade of blue so pale they were nearly washed out by the glare of the buildings around her, wrinkled up as she smiled. "Citizens of Leeara," the woman, Choshana, said, and at the sound of her bright and cultured voice, the crowd cheered again. "Citizens of Leeara," she began again, "I am so very honored to be chosen for this great duty. As ambassador for Leeara and also Youana, I will go out to the stars and planets in our solar system and meet with the people of those worlds, and I will never stop thinking about my own planet as I do so." Choshana had to pause once more as her words brought on another round of applause. "As everyone knows, I am adopted." There was a ripple of wry laughter in the crowd. Everyone did indeed know the story of their newest ambassador's adoption. "I am a Star-born who was adopted into the proud family of Vugarti. I am very grateful to my parents, who took me in on incredibly short notice and raised me as their own daughter. And I'm grateful to the father who selflessly left me here, on this wonderful world. I am proud to be considered Youanai. We are a just and generous people. We must also learn to spread our justice and generosity to the worlds around us. I believe that with them, we can achieve peace. We can all move forward together in this astonishing universe."

Choshana bowed gracefully to end her speech. The citizens listening to her acceptance of the position as Diplomat shouted their agreement as the elderly man, the Head Diplomat of Leeara, turned Choshana to face him and gently laid a heavy metal collar around her neck. "By the powers of city and state," the Head Diplomat cried, "Star-born Choshana Vugarti is officially Diplomat to the Stars!"

"Where shall she go first, Head Diplomat?" asked one of the reporters, shoving his recording device near the elderly man's face.

"We have not yet confirmed a definite plan," the Head Diplomat replied, "but we have consulted with the Lord of Diplomatic Relations on Gallifrey, and he is certainly amenable to meeting with Diplomat Vugarti to inform her of the current status of our neighboring star system, the Constellation of Kasterborous. As Gallifrey is renowned for its advancement in technology, we feel that this is a perfect way to introduce Diplomat Vugarti into interplanetary relations."

The reporters tried to swarm Choshana, but the dark-clothed men behind her politely pushed them back. The young diplomat laughed good-naturedly at the struggling reporters and turned to one of her guards. "I'd like to take the ceremonial walk to my origins, if that's possible."

Her guard did not look pleased. "Most Esteemed Diplomat, that is a good half an hour's walk from here."

"I know," Choshana said, "but I really do think that it's important. I need to honor the traditions of Leeara, to show the people that I am part of their culture. Please, let me do this."

The guard pushed another reporter back and sighed. "All right. But only if you change into something less eye-catching."

Within minutes, the crowd had dispersed, the dignitaries had gone back into the Center of Interplanetary Affairs, and Choshana had gone inside, changed, and come back out again. She still wore the metal collar, but she had pulled on her everyday clothes rather than her cumbersome ceremonial robes. Her guards surrounded her and walked with her as she descended the steps and entered the main streets of Leeara.

Choshana had only gone a few steps when she felt a queer sensation pass all over her. Her heart beat slower in her chest, her breath caught, and her skin seemed to shiver. A song began in her mind, a dim, telepathic message she could have sworn she had heard before. The song gained in intensity, along with the strange but comforting feeling of meeting an old friend for the first time in years. No telepathic signal in her life had ever felt the same.

On instinct, the Youanai diplomat spun in a circle, looking all around her. The street was crowded; people gave her strange looks when they realized that she was the only still person in a sea of moving bodies. Her guards stopped with her and one of them asked her what was wrong. "Nothing's wrong," Choshana said, faintly, "but I have the most incredible…"

She lost track of her words as she watched one person in particular pass her on the street, walking in the same direction as herself. He walked within arm's length: a man who was much taller than she was, with curly blonde hair and fiery blue eyes and the most ridiculous, parti-colored coat she had ever seen. When he passed her, the song in her head exploded into a joyous melody.

For one brief moment, their eyes met.

Images and sense memories flooded into the Youanai woman. _Warmth, comfort, safety, happiness. Snow and sky. Faces that looked down at her with warmth and tenderness. Names, painted with fondness: Adric, Nyssa, Tegan. Bullets, a blue box, and brushes of kisses on her cheeks and forehead. Baths with exasperated mutters and gentle movements. And through it all, a steady presence in her mind which reflected the careful way in which she was held and carried. Affection, not only for her, but flowing from her, for a man who ultimately shut off his telepathic link with her for her own good. _

_ Father! _

The telepathic link was back, but before Choshana could seize his hand and establish contact fully, he was gone. She looked ahead of her and behind her. How could she have lost that head of curls and that hideous coat? But, no matter how hard she looked, she could no longer see him. Choshana stood still in the middle of the street and swallowed back a surge of emotion.

It was not coincidence that he had come back on the day of her instatement as Diplomat to the Stars. She didn't know who he was or how he had managed to travel all this way or how he knew about her career, but she knew he had done it for her, just as he'd given her up thirty years before. She felt love for this man swell in her spirit. Choshana closed her eyes and concentrated very hard.

_I'm home, _she thought, projecting the mental message as loudly as she could. _This is my home. You gave it to me. Thank you. _And, only hesitating a little, she added, _I love you. _

Choshana's mental energy faded. She relinquished the message and hoped it got to its intended recipient. Then, she started walking again, toward the place where her story on Youana had begun. As she walked, she couldn't help but hope that she might meet her father once again, somewhere amongst the stars.

THE END


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